Marisacat

Lookin’ a little human… 18 October 2007

A fresh water fish swims in a tank on display at a shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand, for National Ornament Fish Day. [AP via BBC]

Could be post-nuclear, from human flesh. Fascinating version of the human face, forehead, good peripheral vision, lips, cheeks, chin… and apparently some decorative whorls on either side of that knob of a chin. I’d love to see the profile…

A very fleshy presentation… Hell, dress it with self-segregating head gear, from a “white lady” summer straw affair to baseball cap to some sort of identifying color tag cotton neckerchief on the head… and you have the non-voter. Or the voter.

A haunting image…

Enjoy………………

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Listening to Negroponte on Charlie Rose. Gah. He blames the Iranians for “upsetting their neighborhood”. I am going to be hearing this utter scheisse for the. rest. of. my. life………

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton returned more than $800,000 in contributions donated to her presidential campaign that were arranged by alleged swindler Norman Hsu.

But campaign officials said Tuesday they had no plans to return more than $260,000 that many of the same donors gave to her Senate political accounts.

Officials said they would return those contributions only if requested to do so by individual contributors.

A Los Angeles Times analysis found that 77 donors whose contributions to the presidential campaign were returned last month also gave to Clinton’s two Senate-related political funds.

Her Senate campaign committee, Friends of Hillary, received $235,000 in donations from the 77 donors later linked to Hsu. Ten of those contributors gave an additional $28,000 to Clinton’s leadership political fund, HillPac.

The defense industry this year abandoned its decade-long commitment to the Republican Party, funneling the lion share of its contributions to Democratic presidential candidates, especially to Hillary Clinton who far out-paced all her competitors.

An examination of contributions of $500 or more, using the Huffington Post’s Fundrace website, shows that employees of the top five arms makers – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics — gave Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to Republicans.

Senator Clinton took in $52,600, more than half of the total going to all Democrats, and a figure equaling 60 percent of the sum going to the entire GOP field. Her closest competitor for defense industry money is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R.), who raised $32,000.

Insofar as defense workers making political donations reflect the interests of their employers, the contributions clearly suggest that the arms industry has reach the conclusion that Democratic prospects for 2008 are very good indeed. Since their profits are so heavily dependent on government contracts, companies in this field want to be sure they do not have hostile relations with the White House.

The strong support for Clinton indicates that a majority of defense industry executives currently believe Clinton is a favorite to win the Democratic nomination and, in November, 2008, the general election.

And yet so-called “liberals” will happily vote for them. Enjoy the blood and gore, folks.

Loved the stuff on the gay priests in the last thread. I was told by a NYPD cop who knew him well that the revered FDNY chaplain Mychal Judge, killed at the WTC, was gay. But:

Judge seems never to have come out to the men across the street, at Engine 1-Ladder 24.

From this story, he seems like a good guy, but I really have to laugh when I see a reference to how he counseled people on their marriages. How can you live such a male-centered existence, in a political and religious hierarchy run by males, and advise anyone about relationships that involve women?

…Britain could well have been occupied; in fact Jersey and Guernsey were occupied. There was a counter-occupation plan drawn up by the Ministry of Defence, which included what would today be termed terrorism. It included dad’s army – the real dad’s army – taking up arms against not only the occupiers, but also collaborators. We seem to have forgotten that. How do we recognize the legitimacy of, say, the French Resistance, who were using ‘terrorism’ against the Nazis, and not recognize the right of people to defend themselves in Iraq or elsewhere? It’s a principle: are you allowed to resist occupation or not? To say that it is only legal ‘when we say so’ is to remove the principle of self defence. It is a time honoured tradition for people to resist occupation. The Terrorism Acts in this country attempt, with a series of legislation, to criminalize not only attacks against civilians – but any ability or idea to support resistance movements against occupation, whether in Iraq, Palestine, or anywhere else…”

sv, I had that discussion with my husband the fallen Catholic. He keeps insisting that women have very powerful positions in the Church. All I could think of was The Magdalene Sisters. The power to do what ? Run the laundry and beat the shit out of younger, vulnerable women ?

“Despite an intense lobbying effort from such privacy groups, the Senate sealed an expected deal this week with President Bush to grant major telecommunications companies — including Verizon, Comcast and AT&T — immunity from prosecution for their role in the President’s warrantless eavesdropping program if they can “demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.”

I hope Ariana has read the 800 comments taking her to task for ignoring the NUMBER ONE question asked by her readers in that ridiculous Pelosi Tea Time Interview. Huffington demands we be FEARLESS but cowers like a crow before a scarecrow like Pelosi.

My favorite bit is Ariana deciding to ignore that impeachment question because she personally decided that there are more important things to do and discuss. O’ The Democracy!

Decent Esquire article on the march to war with Iran. Confirms for many of us that this was indeed planned long ago. Personally, I don’t think Hersh and Ritter have ever been wrong – if the full story is ever written, we’ll see exactly what was behind each of the delays.

#21 – Marisa – I never trust a hard rightwinger that suddenly “sees the light” and becomes a “liberal” unless they can describe and talk about the complete psychological breakdown that such a dramatic shift in consciousness would require. That’s one reason why David Brock has credibility with me. Not that he changed into a leftist, that would be a distance too far from where he started. Arianna is simply an authoritarian gadfly who moves to wherever the pickings look easiest. For fun and personal profit. She has no difficulty being used – what a shame the left hasn’t figured out as well as the right how to make use of such people without embracing them as one of their own. As for Newt – well, it wasn’t as if she was getting any at home. Better to fuck another rightwing, family values hypocrite than risk being exposed by someone on the left.

sv -#25 – yes. Political orientation is a sum of an individual’s worldview – biases, knowledge, etc. The latter is highly resistant to change. It’s why education up to a certain age, like 20-22, is so dangerous to the established order. Also explains why so many young people can become liberal while they attend college and later revert back to something closer to what was socialized in them by their family or origin, religion, community, etc. (Assuming they had shifted their orientation based on knowledge and not simply because it was more fashionable to be liberal, and given the sorry state of education in the US today, doubt that many are getting enough to be well grounded in a liberal orientation.) To become a liberal and remain a liberal is hard work for anyone not oriented in that direction at a young age.

Today “libertarianism” has become fashionable among the young because they know they don’t like the rightwing interference with their sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. But they do like the GOP myth that without taxes, the special ones will become rich. And they love the creepy, nationalistic, militarism in the US. Explains why they slobbered over shiny four stars as much as Chris Matthews did over the prancing, codpiece “I am a war prezidant.” Totally clueless as to the homoeroticism that they’re responding to on a subliminal basis.

HC #26 – “Blinded by the Right” details a credible journey to his change. While it is possible to write about a fake transformation since the elements to a real one aren’t unknown, it is easier said than done. A con-artist wouldn’t include the sorts of small details necessary to describe such a journey. A good fiction writer might be able to accomplish it but Brock doesn’t write fiction.

wozzle, if all you’re put off of is dinner, you’re a fortunate person.

I’m thinking of going out to the factory floor now and offering somebody five dollars to knock me out with a 10 lb rigging hook — Wile E. Coyote-style– so I won’t have to think about… THAT… for at least three or four hours. :/

The problem is that Brock has a long history of being an oprative, dissembler and propaganda fabulist wordsmith for hire.

He just got tired of the R gay closet, imo, and changed sides. Brought his “skill set” wtih him. Plus these switchers are heralded. Much beloved, esp a few years ago when Brock noticed the sun and saw The Light.

IMO “liberal” BlahgSnarls, Snouts and Snots and tabulators (which is what he is, of media word parsing) are laughing loud long and hard at the assembled “D” masses.

And again, being at the core of a Clinton operation (this is roundly admitted w/r/t MM) is NOT A MOVE OVER to anything. A shift of some sort, moving from High Episcopalian to Calvary Presbyterian. If that..

Forget about “swing voters” — even die hard Republicans are running away from their party. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that over a third of President Bush’s largest fundraisers have yet to support a candidate in their party’s primary. As one Bush Pioneer put it, “I’m just not happy with the direction of our party. I think we have a huge credibility problem, which I have not seen any of the candidates show the ability to rise above.”

Everyday Republicans are sick of their party making choices they wouldn’t make — can you blame them?

While the Republican Party is coming apart, our Party is investing in infrastructure and grassroots development. We’re not going to miss a single chance to cement a strong position and reach areas that Democrats ignored for decades.

Our innovative voter contact system will give Democratic organizers on the ground the tools they need to target key areas and get out the vote on Election Day. And our field organizers are meeting with election officials in every state to prevent any attempted voter disenfranchisement before it happens.

Come Election Day, we cannot leave anything out there on the field. Step up and do your part by donating $15, $25, $50 or more:

George Bush may be gloating today, but we’re not falling for it. The Republican Party is alienating more and more Americans who can’t stand its narrowing, cruel agenda.

If there’s ever been a day that shows how important victory in 2008 has become, it is today.

Despite a broad, bi-partisan effort in Congress, George Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program remains in place. This president and his loyalists in Congress have done the unthinkable, cutting millions of American kids from the basic health care services they need.

You stood up and fought, the Democrats in Congress stood up and fought, but we just didn’t have the numbers to overturn the veto.

Not here to say that Brock is or ever can be much more than a liberal — he squandered to many of his formative years consuming rightwing garbage and therefore, isn’t that well educated in history, economics and sociology. He doesn’t deny that he was a rightwing operative or that he was morally bankrupt for years. However, he was never in the closet. No more so than many of the Hill staffers that aren’t public figures. They just live in their rightwing bubble world where being gay is no big deal as long as it’s not in the face of the constituents back home. Then there is the code among the gay DEM and GOP in DC – don’t publicly out us and we won’t out you. Brock could, but refuses, to tell any of those secrets. Although, I’ve long held the suspicion that he was the original source of the tip on Gannon/guckert. Overall, he’s more useful than parade of retired generals now distancing themselves from the GOP. And more sincere than Huffington who never paid a price for being a rightwing flak or leaving the GOP. If people like Brock and Huffington only nudge people little further to the left than they were in 2001 when GWB had a 90% approval rating, than they have served a useful purpose. If they stop where they are, then other voices will come along take their place. My god, in 2001, I was reduced to reading MWOL and Alterman because there was so little out there. I don’t read Media Matters but it’s still a good thing that someone is out there tracking and documenting the lies of the Rush crowd for those not bright or educated enough to recognize bs when they hear it. They are like entry points for people who sense that something is very wrong with this country and begin to look for alternative voices. For many, it will sustain them for a while and then they’ll get bored and move on to something more substantial and edgier or simply become better media consumers. We didn’t get here overnight and if there is any hope for this country, it won’t be reversed quickly. Unfortunately, must say that the gold dust twins, Hillary and Nancy, may set the women back another generation. A major reason why taking both of them out as quickly as possible would be a good idea.

If people like Brock and Huffington only nudge people little further to the left than they were in 2001 when GWB had a 90% approval rating, than they have served a useful purpose.

Well throw Kos the individual on that pyre as well. They are in this – all of them – together.

Where in all the scabrous exhorted hatred of Bush (whihc has made jack difference – on anything) is there even a nudge ot the left?

None. At a time when genuine left, liberal progressive (pick a word) rhetoric and push for policies might be on view.,… that is NOT what we see.

What I see, and it is my opinion and nothing more, I see the right and the hard right morphing their public face. and online has assisted.

None of those who has been allowed to rise to notoriety, much less leadership and or link sappy happy heaven online is the least bit other than moderate / right to full on right and authoritarian. And I speak of what rides the so called left, broad left, of the dial.

Nature of the online BUSINESS. Authoritarians, attys, operatives from various nooks and crannies, pols, ex pols and oh yes programmers.

It’s professional wrestling. They’re the impressarios. We’re the dumb hillbilly audience. And it works for the “left” and the “right”, for Kos and LGF. As long as you don’t step over a certain line (criticize Israel, talk up Nader or Ron Paul, suggest that maybe Hugo Chavez isn’t so bad) you can be as vehement as you want.

But note how angry they all get if you say something like “gee you think we should be wasting that much time on Ann Coulter”.

I don’t mean to belittle the 80+ deaths, and countless other injuries. Just the chain of slaughterhouses the US opened in the Middle East as if they were 7-11 franchises. Or maybe I should say 9/11 franchises.

Political orientation is a sum of an individual’s worldview – biases, knowledge, etc. The latter is highly resistant to change.

I don’t know … I was a little fucking “libertarian” in my early twenties. I said all the stupid shit about Social Security and whatnot. I loved Gary Hart, wished that I’d been a year older so I coulda voted for John Anderson. Other than my anti-nuke beliefs, I was probably center/center right in a lot of ways. I definitely thought “victimless” crimes shouldn’t be crimes (still do), but wasn’t a fan of the national gov’t, hated much that the Democrats did. Hell, in a lot of ways I was a lot like the people who became the core of the DLC.

Then I got some schooling, moved out into the world, went through a couple of recessions, met some people of different races and different social classes, and I’ve moved steadily left as I’ve gotten older.

“The President has no right to secretly eavesdrop on the conversations and activities of law abiding American citizens and anyone who has aided and abetted him in these illegal activities should be held accountable,” said Dodd. “It is unconscionable that such a basic right has been violated, and that the President is the perpetrator. I will do everything in my power to stop Congress from shielding this President’s agenda of secrecy, deception, and blatant unlawfulness.”

Of course, this raises the issue of why him and the other more-leftish Senators don’t use this tactic more often … say about anything to do with the war.

“Why is it that the Democratic coalitions are always to be built on anyone to the left of Reagan giving up their beliefs and having to support a pro-war, pro-corporate agenda? If there was truly a coalition and some give and take, perhaps a coalition with a few of the less neaderthalic Democrats might be possible.

But the deal the Democrats always offer is that we should completely surrender all of our ideals and positions in exchange for absolutely nothing. Apparently we are supposed to feel great joy in the simple fact that a candidate with a (D) after their name won an election. We certainly aren’t supposed to expect any more than that.

The day I hear the Democratic leadership telling the pro-war, pro-corporate Democrats that they have to surrender and give up what they believe in at least part of the time in order to be in a coalition with us, then maybe I’ll believe in the possibility of a coalition with the Democrats. But this one-direction, we-always-get-screwed coalition is for the birds.”

I don’t know if anybody’s linked to this yet (I could very well have missed it), but a new Pepe piece is up:

The ultimate nightmare for White House/Pentagon designs on Middle East energy resources is not Iran after all: it’s a unified Iraqi resistance, comprising not only Sunnis but also Shi’ites.

“It’s the resistance, stupid” – along with “it’s the oil, stupid”. The intimate connection means there’s no way for Washington to control Iraq’s oil without protecting it with a string of sprawling military “super-bases”.

The ultimate, unspoken taboo of the Iraq tragedy is that the US will never leave Iraq, unless, of course, it is kicked out. And that’s exactly what the makings of a unified Sunni-Shi’ite resistance is set to accomplish.

Marisa #39 – Kos? Wouldn’t occur to me to lump him in with Brock and Huffington. He’s a conservative kid who got lucky, and too stupid or uneducated to know that “I hate GWB” doesn’t make one a Democrat or liberal which is why at his not so tender age, he has no idea what his political orientation is. Not as smart or educated as either Brock and Huffington. And can’t write half as well as either. Huffington is the cleverest of the three and the best self promoter. Kos looks like a carnival huckster; whereas, Arianna seductively sells the high priced stuff. She and Kos are relatively amoral, but Brock does have a conscience, not all that well developed but still a conscience. Making money is a more well developed orientation in those who are or were Republicans or corporate DEMs. Maybe because their self-worth is tied up with financial success.

Compare Atrios and Kos – Duncan had his blog before Kos and is an economist. Yet, he didn’t have that money making thing down. His blog was just a place for him and others to rant. Possibly from day one Kos saw a business opportunity. Back in the late eighties I had a friend who was a computer/intenet geek. I recall him telling me about how important it was to get “hits,” but there seemed not to be any reason for that except self-gratification. (Advertising sales is obviously not one of my business areas of expertise because I never considered how “hits” could one day be turned into dollars.) Guess I’ve known too many younger men like Kos who with limited talents and not much brain power have been financially successful — all of them are exceedingly boring and given to having inflated opinions of themselves. Those I’ve known always thought that I liked them, never recognizing that they weren’t interesting enough for me talk about them to others, and that flattering them was a game for me to see how much of a sucker they were. (Now I sound like a terrible person — but as I never did that for any personal gain or malicious reason, it only makes me a little bit devious. They were good experiments to see what worked best with men which I applied with clients when I was forced to do marketing.)

MitM #48 – “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” was bound to kick in at some point when they all recognized that the US could give a shit about the separate factions. Wonder when the Kurds will get a clue and join them? Perhaps when they see that the US will do nothing to protect them from the Turks.

A theory about why Hastert is suddenly resigning. After describing a the testimony of a couple of hookers talking about Wilkes and Cunningham in Wilkes’ trial, we then learn that Wilkes’ nephew testified:

Combs, the nephew, also testified that Wilkes also “communicated with” other sleazy politicians known to be hungry for bribes like Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Roy Blunt (R-MO), and, of course, Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Denny Hastert (R-IL). He testified today– just as Hastert let it be known he would be resigning from Congress– that Wilkes had paid “to fly Cunningham and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert from a golf outing in Palm Springs to San Diego for a reception and then back to Washington on private jets.” The media isn’t making the connection to the testimony and Hastert’s sudden decision to resign. CNN, for example, reported an aide saying “I think he is just done with being a member of Congress.” I am anxiously awaiting for CNN to report Hastert’s favorite cookie recipes.

This is the real reason for the Dali Lama thing, not to mention the poison toys and food (what, all the sudden Chinese goods turned bad?!?!) and other China bashing we’re hearing more and more of:

HENRY: Absolutely. I mean, Mr. Bush got plaudits today from even some Democrats on the Hill by standing up and being seen publicly with the Dalai Lama but obviously that makes China irate and China is key here. Because you can’t get any tough sanctions passed in the United Nations Security Council without China on board.

So if they are angry, that is not good. And if you don’t get tough sanctions, sanctions actually with some teeth, that takes a big weapon off the table and makes the possibility—I stress possibility—of war more likely, Anderson.

Marie – dunno if you were online back in 2001, but there was a lot of good left stuff. Counterpunch was up and running strong, I believe alternet was running, as was smirking chimp. Really the best thing going though was the indymedia sites that largely organized the anti-globalization movement. Lefty activists worldwide were using those sites to communicate get out news about police actions against peaceful protest, etc., etc. Narconews was running & had wonderful stories about the leftist movement in Latin America – and there were the political BBS – alt.politics, alt.politics.green, alt.politics.us. Granted they were overrun with right wing idiots trying to pick fights, but there was a lot of useful conversation. I was was also on numerous e-mail lists started right after the election that were full of great links.

All of this lost steam with the invention of the ‘blahgs’. Activists got funneled into the sheparding done by a bunch of ops to get in line behind the Dems. I, for one, fell for it.

What I think is sad, is that since many have now seen the light about the ‘blahgs’, with the notable exceptions of things like the Jena protests, left orgnanizing online has not returned to the prominence it had before the ‘blahgs’. I don’t know if having an organized left could even make a difference at this point, as this country is going to hell whether we want it to or not – and no amount of hoping will change that – but I think it could be useful to prepare for re-establishing a strong left in this country after the crash.

2001? Hmm. I was reading Slashdot and Fucked Company and trying to trick people into clicking on Goatse.

Steve Gilliard used to post long, pompus very earnest pieces on Fucked Company about the site being the kernel of the next great tech industry labor movement. So I followed him over to Netslaves occasionally.

I followed Cockburn from the Nation to Counterpunch I forget when, easily by 2001.

I started checking out Atrios when the mainstream media was briefly into him during the Trent Lott affair.

I remember the exact date I started reading Indymedia, February 15, 2003. Indymedia’s incredibly uneven and right now New York Indymedia’s being ripped a part by a long running feud between the anarchists from Infoshop and some members of the RCP.

I read the Howard Dean blog alot in 2003 and 2004.

I think it was AFTER the November 2004 election when the Democratic sites went psycho authoritarian. Atrios used to be a fun site (he used to have “Talk Like Bill O’Reilly” days). Then around late 2004 a certain type of person kind of took over, the kind that would call you a “troll” if you did anything to question the orthodoxy.

By 2005 it was done. The Dem sites were unbearable.

I was involved with “World Can’t Wait” for awhile and I was trying to get them to let me put them on a Scoop site but they didn’t want open forums of any sort (since they were afraid trolls would post threats to Bush etc. and get their tax exempt status taken away).

A Howard student is suing the University for negligence and medical malpractice because she said she was raped and denied proper care at GW Hospital because she allegedly appeared intoxicated, according to documents filed in D.C. Superior Court.

The plaintiff, a 19-year-old sophomore, also filed suit against the District, Howard University Hospital and several local doctors. The complaint states she was given a date-rape drug at an off-campus party near Howard and was then denied a rape kit at several hospitals – including GW.

A rape kit is a collection of bodily fluids and samples taken after a possible sexual assault to help identify the perpetrator. It can include semen, blood and body tissue.

GW Hospital allegedly denied her treatment because doctors at Howard said she appeared intoxicated, according to court documents.

The Hatchet is withholding the female student’s name due to its policy of not naming individuals who have reported being victims of sexual crimes.

She is also suing the University and its hospital for negligent hiring.

The plaintiff is asking for compensatory damages, a court order to have her case properly investigated and revision of GW Hospital’s rape treatment policies.

“There is no legitimate reason why it was handled this way,” said Bruce Spiva, her attorney. “She has really been hurt by this and is reluctant to speak out publicly.”

David Garofalo, a spokesperson for the Medical Faculty Associates, said the allegations against Christopher Lang, a GW physician named in the lawsuit, are “without merit.”

In court documents, the University states that the defendants “at all times complied with the applicable standard of care and were in no way negligent.”

“When a young woman comes into a sexual assault center, she ought to be given a test for date-rape drugs,” Spiva said. “She ought not be denied or questioned as if she’d done something wrong.”

In 2001, most of my political yakking was happening on the Ms. Boards. Ironically, getting fired up about Nader’s campaign in 2000 got me connected to a couple of other feminists who’d also been inspired to re-examine their commitment to woman-centered activism in the aftermath of the stolen election. The twist was that we were often made very unwelcome in feminist spaces by the Democrat true believers, despite any attempts at olive branches. (I was briefely involved with MoveON in 2002, then dropped it because I could smell the scam.)

One “sister” over there was convinced that I was booted off the board because I was so loudly dismissive of Democrats and the two-party system. (It’s a long shot, but not impossible, I suppose.) I had a little series of electoral reform “cheat sheets” I used to post there, which would inevitably get a few good responses but mostly indifference. A very familiar pattern in my experience around the blogosphere.

lucid & HC – only started to get on-line in late 2000. Up until then merely used it for research and e-mail. And then only looked for things to read that didn’t make me feel crazy. But do know that I didn’t look for much in 2001 (my first response on hearing about a plane flying into the WTC was to look around for a radio and not to get on-line). Can only recall that I found my first blog (probably Atrios) after I’d been reading Counterpunch, The Nation, Daily Howler for several months. iirc Atrios took me to MyDD and that to dKos. And TPM was in there somewhere. I liked and lurked at MyDD and dKos because they seemed to have some expertise in electoral politics — as my mood was dark and could only foresee a very good midterm for the GOP – I appreciated hearing that “we’re gonna win this. The day after the election, I ended my lurking. I was pissed that I and not they had been reading the right tea leaves. But being right is not a criteria for credibility in this country anymore. MyDD began boring long before he shut it down for a while and I quit going there. I also soon gave up on the comments at Atrios as it was nothing more than people talking to themselves and rarely saying anything of interest. digby was there back then.

I would date the deterioration to the spring of ’03 with the appearance of the Clarkies, not that I could have recognized it for what it was back then. Why the hell was there an invasion of people raving about some retired general for POTUS? By 1/04 the inherent possibility of blogs becoming an organizing principle was over – it was all about raising campaign money and getting messages from DEM politicians and their staff. And for all that time that people spent there, they still couldn’t see that the ’04 election would be another GOP winner.

Do recall saying that Reid was an idiot in his handling of the Schiavo issue but don’t recall being trolled for it. Reid wouldn’t recognize a winning position if God came down and handed it to him.

Surprisingly enough, thoughtful and very liberal people do still appear at dKos. Their UID numbers get higher and higher. It’s become rare for me to encounter many with a UID lower than 60,000 and now most of them seem to be above 100K. If I had to guess, I would say that the ratio of readers conservative to far left hasn’t changed all that much over the years. Yet, the ratio of naive and either not too bright or too educated has increased since late ’02 to early ’03. Nobody back then would have said, “candidate X really, really cares about ME.”

I sense that this wave of blogs is now mature. Will be around for several more years. But long past being cutting edge. And have no idea what will emerge next.

I would date the deterioration to the spring of ‘03 with the appearance of the Clarkies

Another watershed was Ohio in 2004. Atrios shut down his blog for two days in order to avoid discussing it. Kos just banned any discussion of election fraud. Then the banning of 9/11 conspiracy theories. The constant demonization of Nader. Then the banning of debates on Israel/Palestine. Then the banning of debates on Ron Paul.

The more debate you ban, the worse it gets. Even banning worthless debates like the 9/11 conspiracy theory debates still throws out all the subtle issue that can often come up in those debates with the larger bullshit.

It’s going to get much, much worse. Right now Kos is just a bunch of press releases for Edwards and Obama. When Hillary gets the nomination, the whole site’s going to be sort of besides the point. Why not just go to the Hillary blog?

Marisa #204 prior thread re: Hastert. His DEM opponent last year was Lasch, a union carpenter (iirc but definitely union and blue collar). Has a college degree in something. Not rich and not a blue dog. With little money he managed to get 40% of the vote. He’s running again. A much better candidate than some of those Rahm-lets.

And banning Cindy Sheehan. That might have been the nail in the coffin but it was inevitable. The opposition to the war was useful until November of 2006. Then you had to find some excuse to shut people up.

thanks for the nudge. It was someone (self funder, millionaire, refusal to campaign) who ran against iirc the No 3 or 4 in R leadership in the House. If I recall there was a good sized scandal against him as well and the seat should have been taken.

The rules had been made before anybody in the Pentagon had ever imagined an anti-war movement. And by the time they figured out that the people at home (and the soldiers) were horrified at the idea of killing the Vietnamese, it was too late. It was out.

“As I travel the Fox Valley and the district, I hear people tell me over and over that they want change,” Foster said in a prepared statement. “The first step in that change is for Democrats to win in the 14th District in November. With help of elected officials like Dan Hynes and others, and strong support from the grassroots, that’s just what I intend to do.”

As one might expect to be the case, Foster’s fellow Democratic opponents downplayed the endorsement.

Stein, a Geneva attorney, called Foster a multi-millionaire like Republican candidate Jim Oberweis and said it’s no surprise that politicians would seek to curry favor with him.

HERE is his website, already set up to run for the set, and on the front page there is a blurb that reads:

Ronald Reagan’s hometown Mayor endorses Democrat Bill Foster

He really pushes the idea that he’s a scientist and that there are technical solutions to all of our problems on his issues page. Beyond that, he advocates almost nothing clearly.

Exactly. TLC is already so much of a subsidiary of Hillary, Inc. that it’s painful to think about going over there. That’s exactly what dKos became as soon as Kerry got the nom in early ’04. If they were to ban anything, it should be candidate shill diaries. Put the links to the candidate blogs at the top of the page.

As I read Atrios intermittently, missed the fact that he shut down in ’04. But on his site why not – it’s not as if anybody there was bringing in useful information from the ground in OH. A few people did do that at dKos. Can also understand banning 9/11 CT – those people use weak or selective evidence and crappy logic. I might ban them for stupidity. But banning I/P is crazy — this is a major issue that we must get more clarity on even if it means a lot of brawls. I was labeled a CT for a diary suggesting that Pat Tillman was either fragged or murdered on orders from higher up. I know that it wasn’t an accident but there isn’t enough information available to figure out why he was murdered or how far up the chain of command the order came from.

what is going on online is keepign a tight lid on any sort of movement, mass small fractured or otherwise.

If they rise, are elevated, get five mil in VC money, are a direct line tool of the party, are at the top of the heap of the online Clintonite sites and orgs (I covered Arianna, Kos and Brock in there as well as most others who rose) they are conservatives.

In that sense, not in how he writes or does not write I lump Kos right in there.

over a year ago, Ari Berman idd a piece in The Nation on the online sites – not so much blahgs as orgs, like CAP for one… I posted on it at the time (will see if I can find it)… some strengths here and there BUT he also listed the verboten topics by the party – which he pointed out, avoiding those you avoid gaining first, strength in broadening the arguments, but you, second, avoid any breakthrus in reporting or discussion etc.. Standstill..

Honestly I don’t get the fuss about Al Gore. The Kosniks think he’s the next best thing to Jesus. Alexander Cockburn compared him to Joseph Goebbels.

People are *projecting* their own bullshit onto him. He’s the same Al Gore he’s always been. He writes decent books. He’s an intelligent guy who knows how to frame issues. But he’s not a good politician and he’s not exactly progressive.

If he ran now, Hillary would slime him beyond recognition. It would rip the party in half and he at least knows it so he’s no more going to try to take the White House away from Hillary than he was from Bush in 2000.

Yeah he won a Nobel Prize. So did Jimmy Carter. Crappy right wing president, best advocate the Palestinians have ever had.

Arafat won a Nobel Prize. Same full of himself gangster quisling posing as a revolutionary before and after.

True, Martin Luther King used the Nobel prize to push himself to do better things but Gore is no MLK.

I should point out here that, from my point of view, the whole notion of “electability” is a profoundly misguided and anti-democratic concept. There’s a reason elementary schoolteachers ask children to put their heads down on their desks before voting by show of hands: the children are learning to make independent decisions, unswayed by the opinions of others. Asking which candidate is more “electable” is like nervously glancing around the room at an imaginary mainstream before deciding how to vote; which in effect pre-emptively marginalizes one’s own value as a unique perceiver and one’s agency as a democratic participant. The consideration of “electability” is inherently anti-change; that’s not how I think either children or grown-ups should approach voting. In my ears, statements along the lines of “Face it, most Americans would never vote for such-and-such a person” are not only drearily self-defeating but actually rather irrelevant, because the question you’re being asked in the electoral process isn’t who you think most Americans would vote for; the question is, which candidate is saying the things that you, and only you, believe most need to be said for the common good. That’s the fundamental thing you wanna get right before you start thinking tactics; if tactical considerations are coming before fundamentals, I’d suggest that maybe you’ve kinda lost your way in this maze.

That bolded sentence sums up the root of so many problems in this country.

I’ve probably told this story before, but I used to watch people shopping with groups of friends at the big Virgin store on Union Square. Someone would pick up headphones and start trying different stuff on one of the listening posts. You could see them start to move, light up a little to whatever they were hearing, only to watch them catch the eye of their pack and immediately stop and put the headphones down if everyone else shook their heads or smirked or made fun of them. It was sad, pathetic herd behavior, and I would see it over and over again.

Americans have been trained to see themselves as a market segment, and convinced to feel uneasy if they’re tempted to step outside of their designated group.

CSTAR #76 – thanks for the link. Excellent short. Not sure why Americans wouldn’t have been able to figure that out by themselves, but I suspect it’s because they think the Iraqis are dumb and uneducated. Then they convinced themselves that it was all about some religious/ethnic strife. When it’s about US occupying their country. As someone said a few years ago, it takes some hard work to suck more than Saddam did.

Marisa #78 – yes but it will soon become apparent that the $ take and readership has peaked and may decline faster in the coming month than they’ve been projecting. There will always be an audience for infomercials — beats me why – but most people quickly turn the channel/station. Turning themselves into Demomercials was not a good marketing strategy as it reduced the potential readership and may have reduced the amount that could be raised in a more sophisticated fundraising campaign. Boring candidates are not inspiring enough for people to open their wallets.

“Academic colleagues, get used to it,” warned the pro-Israel activist Martin Kramer in March 2004. “Yes, you are being watched. Those obscure articles in campus newspapers are now available on the Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi, which you’ve also posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be visited late at night.”

Kramer’s warning inaugurated an attack on intellectual freedom in the U.S. that has grown more aggressive in recent months.

This attack, intended to shield Israel from criticism, not only threatens academic privileges on college campuses, it jeopardizes our capacity to evaluate our foreign policy. With a potentially catastrophic clash with Iran on the horizon and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spiraling out of control, Americans urgently need to be able to think clearly about our commitments and intentions in the Middle East. And yet we are being prevented from doing so by a longstanding campaign of intimidation that has terminated careers, stymied debate and shut down dialogue.

Over the past few years, Israel’s U.S. defenders have stepped up their campaign by establishing a network of institutions (such as Campus Watch, Stand With Us, the David Project, the Israel on Campus Coalition, and the disingenuously named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East) dedicated to the task of monitoring our campuses and bringing pressure to bear on those critical of Israeli policies. By orchestrating letter-writing and petitioning campaigns, falsely raising fears of anti-Semitism, mobilizing often grossly distorted media coverage and recruiting local and national politicians to their cause, they have severely disrupted academic processes, the free function of which once made American universities the envy of the world.

It is no secret that an ongoing problem for the abortion lobby is their rapidly dwindling number of facilities. From the peak years of the late 1980s, approximately two-thirds of the abortion clinics in America have closed permanently, primarily because the abortion industry has been unable to hire enough employees to keep them open.

The reason most often accepted for this is the increasing stigma associated with abortion. The abortion lobby had always counted on legalization to erase the stigma of abortion. But that never happened, and it now appears that they have resigned themselves to the fact it never will. However, even though stigma is a major problem for these people, it is not the only thing that keeps their death camps understaffed. It is also being driven by a looming financial crisis that has been brewing since the day this battle began.

In the first few years of legalized abortion, studies were taken to determine the cost of an abortion. The findings were that, generally speaking, the price was between $300 and $350. Interestingly, those figures have changed little since then. That begs the question: With no competition and a seemingly reliable demand, why have they been unable to raise prices in almost 35 years?

The answer is that, contrary to appearances, the demand is not reliable.

[:::]

Since day 1, the abortion industry has sold this idea that when a woman does not want to be pregnant, she will crawl through hell on broken glass to get an abortion. In other words, their contention is that the abortion decision is a non-marginal one. For that to be true, it would also have to be true that the cost of abortion does not significantly affect the abortion rate.

The evidence is pretty clear that this is not the case. The financial publication Economic Inquiry, Vol. XXVI, April 1988, produced a study about the relationship between abortion cost and abortion rates and found that, “The significant inverse relationship between the price of abortions and the abortion rate confirms that the fundamental law of demand is applicable to abortions.” In other words, as the cost of abortion goes up, the demand for abortion goes down. This group’s findings mirror several other independent studies that have documented the identical link between the price of abortion and the rate of abortion.

[:::]

The point is the abortion industry has not raised prices for almost 35 years for one very sound reason. They can’t. The problem they now face is that, during those 35 years, the cost of doing business has risen dramatically. That has put them in a kind of “Catch 22″ situation. They can’t survive without raising prices, but they can’t raise prices and survive. So even if they could solve the stigma problem, they still couldn’t generate enough profit to pay the salaries needed to attract and keep employees.

Enter Hillary Clinton.

Planned Parenthood’s current expansion is its way of betting on Slick Hilly to be the next president. It is also counting on her to install a system of socialized medicine that will include elective abortion. So even though the Choice Mafia rallies their troops with red-meat rhetoric about Supreme Court appointments, what they are most giddy about is the possibility of government-funded abortions. That is the driving force behind Planned Parenthood’s current expansion. They see Hillary Care getting larger in the rearview mirror and are positioning themselves to be a major player in it.

You may think I’m just baying at the moon here, but if there is one thing I know for certain it is this: At the moment national health care becomes a reality, the cost to the taxpayer for an abortion that now costs about $350 will, instantly, be many times that amount. And I know this is true because a model for it already exists. All you have to do is imagine two women sitting in an abortion clinic waiting to have identical first-trimester abortions. One is paying cash; the second has a health insurance policy to cover her abortion. The first woman will probably get out the door for the usual $350 or so. But make no mistake about it: The second woman’s insurance company will be lucky to escape with anything less than a $3,000 claim to pay.

That scenario is repeated at abortion clinics all across America every day. It is also why the nation’s death merchants see Hillary Care as their salvation. They are relying on socialized medicine to solve their current financial problems by converting $350 private-pay abortions into $3,000 government-pay abortions. The icing on the cake is that, since the customers will be offered these abortions for “free,” the abortion rate is guaranteed to skyrocket.

Like I always say, if you want to understand the abortion business, just follow the money trail. Right now it leads to Rodham and Gomorrah.

The only “true fact” in this pile of steaming manure is that the cost of a first-tri abortion has held fairly steady for about 15 years now–which goes to show what’s possible when insurance companies are out of the picture.

This is because [1] insurers require doctors to have hospital privileges, and [2] doctors must admit a minimum number of patients to a hospital in order to maintain admitting privileges, but [3] abortion patients hardly ever require hospitalization.

In fact, if a doctor whose practice was confined to abortion care admitted enough patients to maintain privileges, s/he would be hard pressed even to maintain a license to practice.

But Crutcher should pat himself on the back for coming up with the best strategy yet for “reducing abortion” — just jack up the fees. I’d say that DFL should sign him up as a consultant … if they didn’t already have him on speed dial.

I’m so glad that we’ll soon be able to entrust the whole thorny dilemma into Hillary’s capable hands. I’ll be rolling in those big-time insurance bucks before I know it.

I don’t believe any topic should be off limits … this country is awash in crappy logic (just turn on CNN at any time day or night and watch for the next shoddily studied medical “breakthrough” story to see another example).

I remember reading about MK Ultra back in places like OMNI magazine when I was really young, and remember such stories being attacked as silly conspiracy theories before the papers were released during Clinton’s term. I remember a “60 Minutes” interview w/ a guy who was trying to get people to believe that his father, Frank Olson, was murdered by the CIA (his father was a researcher on MK Ultra). Evidence came out since that he might be right. People used to write off reports that Tuskegee was a “conspiracy theory”.

People work in collusion and secret all the time to obtain some goal. Corporations do it, governments do it, people do it, for reasons big and small. Discussing what may or may not have happened is essential so that eventually, from all the chaff, some wheat might come out.

MitM #90 – agree – conspiracies/collusion is an everyday occurrence. Many of those CTs from the ’50’s & 60’s seemed completely plausible to me at the time. However, we tend to forget about all the truly nutty ones that were nothing but psychotic fantasies. For example, I didn’t doubt for one minute from the moment that the Watergate burglary was reported that Nixon’s fingerprints were on that. Same with the coup in Chile.

lucid – depends on what you mean by 9-11 CT. Not at all satisfied that it was hatched in a cave in Afghanistan or even that Cheney/Bush had no prior notice. However, it’s a big leap from those suspicions to postulating that a plane didn’t crash into the Pentagon (when there is overwhelming physical evidence and eyewitnesses that it did).

saw hersh speak last night, he had pretty hard words for clinton, and did a fantastic job of responding to some likudnik hecklers by asking them “how am i anti-semitic?” and then laying out clearly how iran policy and the democratic party’s unwillingness to even slow the drive to war to “major jewish groups” and fundraising needs. and then following that with a discussion of how israel got nukes, and our role in helping them.

such an amazing thing, that one would actually be startled when someone says that in public, without hedging. speaks volumes about the degree to which public criticism of israel is taboo in this country.

hersh was trying to put on a good face for the chance of restoring the republic, but his tone of voice said it all. we’re fooked.

MitM #84 – Asch did experiments in conformity decades ago. Basically, most people are too insecure about their perceptions and cognitive abilities not to succumb to peer pressure, even when it’s visibly obvious that the group is flat out wrong.

There is something correct about the notion of “electability” but it’s very broad and has no real meaning when it comes to the narrow range of candidates from which we normally get to select from. There is a second component of it that isn’t absolute but relative. And fashions change. In ’64 Rockefeller was dismissed because he was divorced (although there was a bit of a scandal attached to it as well.) That wasn’t an issue for Reagan or Kerry. But could it be for the twice divorced Rudy who shacked up with his third wife before filing for divorce from his second? Or Newt? I don’t know but it could easily give some voters pause. In general politicians and consultants lag behind the changes in the electorate. They tend to refight the last election instead of the current one.

McKinney is great in the House – but seems to have trouble holding onto that seat. She’s not electable to the WH unless her opponent is a one-eyed, short, wild looking Muslim. No atheist need apply although we’ve surely had a few agnostics. In the TV era, looks matter. Put Kucinich’s words in Mitt Romney’s body, he could win. Otherwise, forget about it.

Hard to hold onto your seat when your own party, usual slavishly devoted to anybody w/ an incumbent D after their name, do everything they can do to stab you in the back.

Watching the Granny D doc is heartbreaking. The way the Donklephants treat her is just fucking horrible (watching Dean run away from a photo-op is fucking horrifying). The Donk candidate for Governor spends a chunk of his debate PRAISING THE REPUBLICAN incumbent, fer jeebus’ sake.

There is one part, when they’re feeling low, where her son says, “they trot you out like a dancing mouse when they need something,” it’s so damned sadly true.

Marie – it has been confirmed the Bushco were warned in no uncertain terms by several foreign governments what was about to happen. While I find the ‘no plane hit the Pentagon’ side of the truth movement incredibly annoying, I think there is a mountain of evidence indicating collusion of some sort within the US government & transnational corporate world. How deep it goes, we’ll never find out – which is why at this point I’ve really given up arguing about it with anyone. I must also admit though, that for a long time I had my doubts about the collapse of WTC 7. Something just didn’t seem right about it. Again – we’ll never know.

What disturbs me though is that in ‘banning’ talk of conspiracies, Dkos also lost a guy like ‘Gnat’ who always had really good finds in various news sources around the world about the seedy shit various colluding groups were pulling. I think that it is sad that anyone who researches in this vein gets lopped in with those who are simply batshit insane. If I point out the the Bush family made their fortune arming the Nazi’s, does that mean I’m a Larouchite, despite the fact that they did? Again – I said I was just curious, but I do find conspiracy research incredibly valuable – even if in the end it turns out there wasn’t a conspircacy at all.

Even before I was banned (over two years ago) they would hound him. And I can no longer remember the topic but they pulled a diary of his posted late one night. Pulled it after the goon on duty that night showed up in the diary.

I think the Bushies did what Americans always did … they underestimated the threat, figured that it wouldn’t be so bad, maybe just one file room of the Reichstag rather a bigger fire, then they’d be able to gin up their “war on terror’. I think they ignored the warnings partially deliberately and partly out of arrogance. Stuff after that … well, like you said, we’ll never know.

I’d forgotten about gnat … good links. I’ll never understand why we’re expected to listen to religous fantasies with “respect” in a country where so many other topics with actual supporting facts to make a case are considered “conspiracies” and out-of-bounds for discussion.

If I point out the the Bush family made their fortune arming the Nazi’s, does that mean I’m a Larouchite, despite the fact that they did?

Considering the fact that Germany was by far the biggest and most powerful country in Europe in the 1930s, the idea that Americans were dealing with Nazis is no more far fetched than the idea that their dealing with the Saudi Royal Family now.

I must also admit though, that for a long time I had my doubts about the collapse of WTC 7. Something just didn’t seem right about it.

Well, a lot of people are fooled by the fact that they locked down the area and there aren’t a lot of photos of both sides of the building. A lot of the conspiracy theorists are influenced by the fact that it looked OK on the north side. But on the south side it was a wreck.

And the 9/11 conspiracy theorists also argue that no property was damaged outside the WTC footprint, which is nonsense. The Verizon CO behind Building 7 was flooded when building 7 collapsed and it put a number of tech companies (ISPs and such) out of business).

Admittedly the 9/11 Commission fucked up by not examing Building 7 but we were never supposed to learn anything from the 9/11 Commission. Remember, it was originally supposed to be chaired by Kissinger. So it was for show and wound up leaving a lot of people wanting a real investigation.

The “controlled demolition” argument is beyond silly. Nobody brings a 110 story building down by controlled demolition. They dissassemble it floor by floor the way they’re doing with the Deutche Bank Building now.

As for the idea that they stood down or that they were conducting a sting operation or that the Israelis were following Atta and knew something and didn’t tell us, all of that is possible. But I doubt I’ll ever find out in my lifetime.

Marisa & MitM – agree that the DLC has been horrible to McKinney; they’re such tired, prissy old maids. However, absent a rock solid constituency tht will re-elect you know matter what you do, one doesn’t have complete freedom to do and say anything and everything. Pelosi showed her ugly (racist?) side when she gave Harmon her seniority back but not McKinney. And the CBC, the only functioning element in Congress for the past few years, now seems to have been drugged into a weird submission. All jumping on the Hillary bandwagon. Don’t know that I’ve ever felt more strongly about hoping for a candidate that’s not a Republican to lose.

HC #83 re: Gore fuss. Have you looked at the other candidates? Gore has more experience, is more progressive on a couple of issues than the others, no more conservative on any issue, wisely opposed the Iraq war, difficult not to respect someone who unfairly lost an election, was told by the DEM insiders to GO away, did his own thing and won an Emmy, Oscar and Nobel prize. Plus he won in 2000 against the odds with less money, a press that hated him and burdened by Clinton’s shenanigans. Isn’t putting your money on a demonstrated winner a better bet than an untested horse? It’s not as if there is any new mud that can be flung at Gore. Who knows what they’ll come up with Hillary. That’s my take on the fuss.

Considering the fact that Germany was by far the biggest and most powerful country in Europe in the 1930s, the idea that Americans were dealing with Nazis is no more far fetched than the idea that their dealing with the Saudi Royal Family now.

Jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick … they were doing more than normal business with Germans who happened to be affiliated with the Nazis. The Bush and Preston families were active colluders. They were active in the American right, and there is some evidence that they were involved with the business/rightist plot to remove FDR that Smedley Butler exposed. They were found guilty later of trading with the enemy, yet of course were let off with a slap on the wrist.

Gore is fine outside of office or as an outsider, just like Jimmy Carter, just like Kucinich.

But put him in power, I don’t see him acting much differently from the rest of the Democrats.

He wrote some good books on the environment in the 90s and did little in power.

He opposed invading Iraq in 2003 but when he was Vice President he was the point man for the hawks in the Clinton administration pushing for tougher sanctions.

Personally he’s OK. But the problem is structural. Gore isn’t tough enough or power hungry enough or radical enough to break down the corrupt power structure in the Democratic party. I don’t see him doing much.

I know it’s hard to give up on the party, since the current system offers them as the only alternative, but you really need to face how corrupt they are, from top to bottom, with the few good ones so tied in knots by commitments from the party (and the demonstration of McKinney as to what happens to “members” who don’t get with the program), that you can expect NOTHING from them.

Marie – interesting to see he’s still posting. I was at a meetup with him right after the conspiracy purge & he told me he would probably make himself scarce & did for quite a while when I was still there. I don’t recall seeing much of anything by him in 2006.

HC – yes many American industrialists supported the fascists, but the Bush family’s collusion was extremely bad – and continued until 1942 – after we entered the war.

The great liberal icon Averill Harriman also did business with the Nazis

By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world’s largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler’s build-up to war

Its no secret anymore, the War on Iraq is a horrific crime. With over a million civilians dead, thousands of working class youth, forced into the army, because they have no other path, to kill other exploited and oppressed people, maimed and buried, with the largest refugee crisis in the middle east since the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land in 1948, with the country’s infrastructure bombed to rubble, with people being deprived of basic needs like clean drinking water and electricity, and with kids afraid to go to school not because of bullies, but because they’re afraid of being killed by the occupation, its hard to deem the War on Iraq and its consequences anything but the barbarism of an imperialist occupation and a crime against humanity. Yet despite this, it didn’t come as a suprise to me, when a week or two ago, top democratic candidates for the 2008 election refused to promise that they’d have the troops out of Iraq by 2013. It didn’t suprise me that Clinton, Obama, and Edwards took the exact position that they were voted into power to act firmly and immediatly against. What did suprise me a little, I guess, was that they were honest that they would not end this colonial occupation and that they are truly not the anti-war party that they have framed themselves to be.

I really wish that people would just let the whole Gore-on-the-White-Horse thing go. For fuck’s sake. He folded. He screwed the people who tried to vote for him. He waited the demure, decent interval to sort-of oppose the war. Shit.

Also, that movie of his is a mediocre, self-serving pile of nothing. Nothing, that is, that wouldn’t be done better in a Nova episode, without the weepy bullshit about his son being trotted out again for the 9,726th time.

HC #110 Personally he’s OK. But the problem is structural. Gore isn’t tough enough or power hungry enough or radical enough to break down the corrupt power structure in the Democratic party.

Don’t necessarily disagree. But what people often miss about Gore is his parents – they instilled the Boy Scout and also the FDR populism in him. His father’s electoral loss crushed him – and to avoid that fate, the Boy Scout dominated his political life. His reward after 25 years was to be undermined by his boss and the party in his WH bid and then to be cheated out of his win. IMHO that’s why we began to see his roots in his convention acceptance speech and have seen more since his loss. Unlike someone like Colin Powell who many thought would push back against GWB and I didn’t think for a second that he would, Gore isn’t as predictable. What you see, may not be exactly what you get with him. Roberts, Alito, Hillary — 99% predictable. Gore a lot less so. I think many people also want to see that in Obama but that may be wishful thinking.

Don’t think the comparison to Carter is apt – he was a DC outsider who was resented and didn’t know his way around DC. I don’t think the DEM Party is much more corrupt today than it was in ’76. The faces have changed but the balance of power among the different factions is not much different — although the average IQ may be considerably lower. Why I doubt that Gore is hungry for the job now is that he’s smart enough to know that the shit is about to hit the fan economically and the mess in the ME will only get worse in the next year. If the economy is ready to topple by election day 11/08, I might vote for the GOP because Rudy, Mitt, whoever would make it even worse – would become the 21st Century Hoover. And the era of the Clintons and Bushes would be over.

ms_xeno He folded. He screwed the people who tried to vote for him. He waited the demure, decent interval to sort-of oppose the war.

I don’t get this. What do you mean “he folded?” He fought back in FL and won in the FL Supreme Court to recount all the votes. The Bush team had filed in federal court to stop the recount and were working their way up the appeal ladder when the FL SC ruled. Then they went to the SCOTUS and got an emergency stay. Exactly what the hell was Gore supposed to do? Only two choices: accept the decision of the SCOTUS or armed rebellion. There was no public support for the latter.

And he didn’t “sort-of oppose” the war. In Sept. 2002 – before the IWR was voted on — he gave a great and passionate speech denouncing an invasion of Iraq. Gore is a more conservative politician than I would like to see in office but I get really sick and tired of the right, left and center giving him a bum rap. Everybody seems to hate him which suggests that maybe I should really like him because god knows the left, right and center in this country screw up big time most of the time.

…Only two choices: accept the decision of the SCOTUS or armed rebellion. There was no public support for the latter…

Oh, right. I keep forgetting that Boy Scouts don’t rebel without a note from home. Yeesh.

His party slapped their base in the face, and is still doing so. To suggest giving him another chance to do that is madness, in my book.

Leave the man where he is, for pity’s sake. Let him make his movies and give his speeches and what-the-fuck-ever. He was worse than worthless on his last trip to the WH and given that he’s chin-deep in the same sort of interests his supposed arch-enemies the Clintons are, only a fool would expect another go-round to be any different.

As far as I’m concerned, not enough people hate him. I only hope that a huge chunk of his sappy-assed worshipful fan base nowadays (a la’ “fijiancat”) is made up of folks half my age that simply have no clue as to what the Clinton/Gore reign was really like.

So they didn’t believe a crime had been committed because she appeared intoxicated? (Which isn’t a shock considering she was drugged.) Make sure to read the whole story of her assault and subsequent horror story at multiple hospitals. It’s just too depressing for words.

Little story, nasty as can be, that fits in well with the resurgence of thereisnospoon at MLW with his rape tales… and the related diary tonight at PFF.

If Gore really is the best we can do, if that pathetic excuse for a politician is what the Donks are capable of, we are well and truly fucked and might as well openly declare an Emperor, as plainly the Republic has no hope of being saved.

Gore didn’t fight, and what little pantomime he offered as a fight was tactically wrongheaded from square one. But that’s not the worst of it … the final knife in the back of Donklephant voters was when that smarmy asshole mocked the CBC from the podium when they BEGGED a Senator to step forward and fight for the disenfranchised black voters of Florida.

God, let him enjoy his ability to propagandize for a fairly worthy cause. He’s better at it.

I went to bed laughing at the DK thread, and I’m still laughing at fijiancat’s” bleating. Whyyyyyyy are you so meeeeeeean to me when I’M a good Gore-worshipping Nader-hater, toooooooo ??

Because, you stupid ass: You are a cheap whore amongst cheap whores. All of you enduring robbery and beatings daily and worshipping at the feet of your pimp, the DP. Some day you think that you, too, will get to be a Madam or pimp, but you’re wrong. There’ll just never be the demand for Madams and pimps that there is for whores. The power-over relationship you’re in doesn’t allow for it.

Ergo, you will be vilified for uttering the dreaded word “Independent” no matter which pimp you want for the post, even the beloved Al Gore. “Independent” is a threat to those running the whorehouse. Period. It will not be allowed. Period.

You and your board and your party have all done your part to wall off any chance for any Indies to make any move from the Left flank at all, no matter how modest. You have cheered for the undermining of democracy and you have plowed the fields with salt. You have ceded populism and revolutionary impulses to the likes of Ron Paul, because you are lazy, stupid, and endlessly masochistic. You disgust me.

Now shut up and take your medicine from the other battered street-walkers, fijiancat. Then you can all line up together and sing a chorus of “When He Hit Me, It Felt Just Like A Kiss” while you wait around for your next beating.

W/r/t Al Gore, I never much liked him for the simple reason that he was/is so close to Marty Peretz. I’ve always been convinced that choosing Lieberman as his running mate was an idea given to him by Peretz. He’d probably have talked him into doing all sorts of other dreadful things as well.

Didn’t take long for some of the people who despise Banazir Bhutto to move against her. She and her family have alienated so many people over the years that whatever investigation might ensure from this is liable to collapse due to the sheer enormity of the task of narrowing down the list of suspects to a manageable amount. It’s interesting to note that the dictator Musharraff who came to power in a coup against the last elected government of Pakistan called the assassination attempt “a conspiracy against democracy,” especially if you enjoy gallows humor. It’s also interesting to note that Bhutto’s husband did not accompany her on her return. For her sake, I hope her food tasters didn’t decide to stick with hubby.

Madman, the Mayor of Madison just got a free trip to Israel with other local politicians…they sure have plenty of money to spread around. I lost the link.

and:

House Applauds Israel as Its Killings Continue
by Matthew Rothschild

On Wednesday, October 25, the House of Representatives passed a resolution, by a lopsided 365-to-30 margin, that exonerated Israel and placed all the blame on the Palestinians for the ongoing violence in the Occupied Territories.
snip
For those who think the Democrats are the good guys in Congress, the ones who fight for fairness and justice and self-determination, look at the roll call: 166 Democrats voted in favor of this resolution; only 21 opposed (eight voted “present” and 14 abstained).

Among those voting for it were such liberals as: Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Tom Barrett of Wisconsin, James Clyburn of South Carolina, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas, John Lewis of Georgia, Nita Lowey of New York, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, George Miller of California, Patsy Mink of Hawaii, Jerrold Nadler of New York, David Obey of Wisconsin, Major Owens of New York, Nancy Pelosi of California, Charles Rangel of New York, and Bobby Rush of Illinois.

Those Democrats courageously voting against the resolution included: David Bonior of Michigan, John Conyers of Michigan, Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, Dennis Kucinichof Ohio, Barbara Lee of California, Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, Jose Serrano of New York, and Maxine Waters of California.

Two Representatives who conspicuously copped out by voting “present” were: Peter DeFazio of Oregon, head of the Progressive Caucus, and Bernie Sanders, the increasingly undistinguished Independent and socialist from Vermont.

All the liberal Representatives who failed to oppose this resolution owe their progressive constituents an answer.

And they owe an apology to the innocent Palestinians who are being killed almost every day by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories.

Meanwhile, Congress and the Clinton Administration are finalizing this year’s aid package for Israel, which consists of $2 billion in military aid and $800 million in economic aid. Israel has asked for an additional $800 million in military aid, and Clinton and the Congress are preparing to cough that up, as well.http://www.commondreams.org/views/103000-106.htm

MitM #130 If Gore really is the best we can do, if that pathetic excuse for a politician is what the Donks are capable of,…

No, the Donks best is Bill & Hill. Has been since 1992. The Donks told Gore to GO AWAY, get lost once they realized that he didn’t plan to be a placeholder for Hillary ’08. Bill was out there saying that Al should just find some little college to hire him as its President. How could any of you have missed the internal schism in the DEM Party in 2000? If it wasn’t obvious to you then, how could you not have seen it in late 2003? After it was clear that the Donks were doing everything possible to take down Dean and Al endorsed him.

For the most part, my attitude towards politicians ranges from indifference to loathing. Those in the second category are incapable of working with anybody but those on the right. Those in the first do have the capacity to work with the left — if pushed enough — and work less well with the right. That’s the best that we can get when government is stacked with neo-liberal, neo-con, corporate evangelical hypocrites. Take them out of the equation and we might as well recognize that fascism has won. Hand the deed to the WH to the Bushes and Clintons. Admit that we’re all good little Germans. There is no white in our institutions today – never has been. But there is some gray left which the left, right and center are doing their very best to blot out and leave nothing but black. Taliban vs. N. Alliance. Some choice. Some legacy to leave to future generations. Because no white or even much gray can pierce through the darkness.

Do you people really think that Gore enjoyed standing there and shutting down Congresswomen like Maxine Waters? That’s crazy. And everyone of us would have done exactly what he did had we been in his shoes. As painful as it was, there was no alternative other than a meaningless, symbolic gesture just as we saw in 2005 when Boxer did sign the election, objection petition. Only for Gore it would have been worse — would have reinforced the sore loserman rap in the minds of the public. This country had already sent the message in the weeks following the election that we weren’t going to rise up and stop the installation of Bush/Cheney. Oh, but somehow all on his own, after exhausting all legal avenues (the only thing that has kept this country from devolving into another fascist dictatorship for a couple of centuries), he was supposed to stand up and fight. Stand there until the guards carried him away and disappeared him into some rubber room. Or killed him – that’s what we prefer to do to inconvenient politicians and leaders. In this country, when the head is cut off the political faction or movement dies with him.

I’d be the first to admit that Gore ain’t much of a leader. I’d put him on a par with JFK and RFK. Not great but better than Nixon and Reagan or their reincarnations in the Clintons and Bushes. But Gore isn’t going to run because the left chooses to believe that if they only imagine a socialist nirvana, meditate to elevate and destroy the Pentagon, that it will be realized. IOW, has made themselves completely irrelevant to the future of this country. The rightwing morons prefer active instead of passive participation in the destruction of whatever this country was supposed to be. And the corporatists are busy continuing their plunder of the country, thank you very much. They win because even though their numbers are tiny they control both parties. They win because they know that they, along with the rightwing morons and leftwing purists, will destroy any politician even a smidgen to their left. The minor ones, secure in their positions with their constituencies, they can buy off because nobody has their backs.

I once made a big error from which I tried to learn something. To be more thorough in evaluating public figures — look at all the gray and not jump too quickly to seeing black instead of gray. I wrote a bunch of letters to Senators to oppose the nomination of Souter. Was I ever an idiot. How could I not have seen that he wasn’t Bork, Thomas, Roberts or Alito? That there are some men and women that have a capacity to grow when put in powerful positions of responsibility. I submit that a nuanced and careful evaluation of such people makes it clear which category they are in. No guarantee they will grow, but a chance is better than no chance.

This country will not implode overnight. If it could, I would be cheering ” bring it on.” It will devolve slowly. And with each devolution, the collective memory or what we once were (not some revision of a time that never was) will get fuzzier and fuzzier. We will adjust to the new, lower standards. Half the country today thinks that Clinton was a good president because their basis of comparison is limited to Bush. Hillary will be a disaster and effectively wipe out the remaining goodwill of Democratic, Inc. and that a woman in the WH can make a positive difference. The next one will be worse than Bush/Cheney. And Democratic, Inc. will move further to the right and consolidate with the dregs of GOP, Inc. Perhaps it’s already too late; then again, maybe it’s not. Like with the environment, if we assume that it’s too late when it’s not, then we will be passive participants in the destruction. If it’s too late and we assume that it isn’t, we won’t change the outcome but at least we made the effort to resist it on the off chance that it wasn’t too late.

Had I been closely following politics in the late ’90s, I would have seen the selection of Lieberman for what it was in real time. It was the grand bargain extracted from Gore as the price for not having the DLC abandon him as the DEM power brokers abandoned McGovern in ’72. I doubt that Gore fully appreciated how far outside the inner circle of power he’d become by ’00. Unlike ’72, on policy issues etc., Gore was still very close to them. But distancing himself an iota from the golden boy was treasonous. Not different from how Bush/Cheney operates. Clinton cannot tolerate anyone that challenges his right to be on center stage. Clearly demonstrated by his disgusting grab for that at the ’00 convention. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill was already anticipating that GWB would be such an obvious disaster in his first term that Hillary had a chance to waltz into the WH in ’04. Gore kind of screwed that up by not losing but he was effectively and easily sidelined. Then Bush/Cheney proved to be too clever for Clinton by triangulating the DLC DEMs in Congress.

Wow, why didn’t I think of that. Ms. Somebody Else could win. Too bad it’s not legal to run “None of the Above” because the phantom just might win this time around. Unfortunately, turning Somebody Else into flesh and blood is a stone cold loser.

There is no Somebody Else. The choice is limited to DLC and maybe not DLC. That’s it. Dean was once DLC but today is maybe not DLC. Edwards was DLC and is probably not maybe not DLC today. Obama hasn’t been DLC but at best is maybe not DLC. Gore might not give a shit anymore.

Must be nice to live in a static, never changing world. Much easier than what I struggle with to observe and look for signs of change, both positive and negative. To try to understand and forgive errors if they are disowned and backed up with behaviors not reminiscent of past errors. It’s a real bitch trying to sort out of this crap. Far easier to slap a coat of black paint on anyone that’s ever served in public office and be done with them. Then twiddle my thumbs waiting for the appearance of a white knight in shining armor. Yeah, someone like Nader who in thirty years on the public stage couldn’t come close to accomplishing what a short, loony bozo like Perot managed to do in less than a year. More Nader – whoo hoo. (But mustn’t look to closely or I might see his feet of clay too.)

Read more carefully, Marie. I have gone on record several times as saying that I hope somebody other than Nader will run on the Left next time. Also that I hoped somebody with a real spine would run in ’04. They didn’t. That left Nader, flaws and all. I don’t vote warmongers and I don’t vote for warmongers’ stooges, either.

Yes, Gore is a new man. I guess if you’re a rich, handsome White guy from a good family there’ll always be a hard core of citizens ready to give you one more chance no matter how many times you screw them over for your own gain.

Some things should not change. One of them is having a breaking point. The serious dearth of supposed progressives who have any discernable breaking point, any core values which they will– at long last– refuse to see thrown on history’s trash heap, is what brings us Gore, Kerry and Clinton II and the rest. Over and over again.

I won’t help you with that, Marie. I spent enough time being a lapdog for the DP and its never-ending parade of thieves and killers. Ain’t never comin’ home. Home is where 90% of all accident occur.;)

Black Monday. Oh, the memories. I took the PATH train between work and home every day, which meant I was saw billions of dazed yuppies going home in the aftermath. I didn’t find out why until the next day, because I worked long hours and didn’t follow the news during most of the week.

The day after, we were all called in by management and told not to worry. They’d made some “difficult” investments but everything would be all right.

ms_xeno – doesn’t matter, Gore isn’t running. I’ve been waiting for forty years for the left to build a bench of progressive candidates from which a leader could emerge and not waste time with vanity POTUS candidates. Hasn’t happened. They seem stuck in some time period before radio and TV existed. Hell, I’m not sure they’re not stuck at 1800 when a President didn’t even have to be a decent public speaker. They do do better than the Libertarian Party in candidate selection, but that’s a really low bar.

MitM and everyone – a new Clinton-Chinese fundraising scandal. Apparently dishwashers in NYC love her so much that handing her $1000+ checks is their dream come true.

re: drop in Dow – chump change only down 2.6% today. Peaked at 14,164 on 10/9 and after today now at 13, 522. Compare that to 1987 when the Dow lost over 22% on Black Monday. In ’87 peaked at 2,722 in Aug and after Black Monday was down to 1,739. Would have to drop to 9,049 to be comparable. Long way to go before reaching that point. (And the big boys are more sophisticated at keeping it up than they were in ’87)

I think “obstructing” is the word you’re looking for. At the very least, you are far more in sympathy with obstructionists than with those who want electoral system reform. Again, I would urge you one of these days to try reading some of the columns Greg Bates wrote about Nader. I don’t give a damn if you like me or the rest of us, but it would behoove you to at least get beyond the sort of snide Kos-ian insults about how we don’t understand the era we’re living in.

I think we understand it– and you– all too well. You’re in our way. And so is your sorry-ass party.

And you sure waste a lot of bandwidth on Gore for somebody who doesn’t believe that he will run.

Well here’s the problem. It’s not the personal failings of Gore or Obama, or the lack of charisma of Dennis Kucinich or the nuttiness of Ron Paul or Mike Gravel that prevents a genuine progressive from emerging.

And it’s not even the American people.

It’s the structure of the political system, the gates and sluices that keep the American people from genuinely expressing its anti-war politics.

And the key to overcoming it is (in my opinion) organizing outside of the two established parties. Once you reach a certain critical mass, Kucinich will be mainstream. Obama will start running to the left. Gravel won’t seem so nutty and everybody will think Hillary and Giuliani are completely insane (which they are).

Al Gore’s getting into the race will shake things up. I agree with you here. It will mean there’s a real primary. An anti-war progressive coalition might even coalesce around Gore. Hillary and Gore might destroy each other and allow Obama to run as a real progressive.

In other words, I half agree with Marie. Having a real primary might be a good thing.

Gore is happy and making multi millions in what is rapidly becoming “green washing”. It was clear a year ago, post Davos, that big money was on board for the facade and so forth of corporatising “green”.

Gore won’t be entering, a quasi new age CEO is very much to his liking, lionised by a curious thing called the Democratic party when he goes to the hill, a mark down, sale table Peace Prize… beloved in another strange place, called Hollywood or LA…

Ms_Xeno – What else is there? Who is in the mix? Not a damn soul – the faint, the fainter and the criminal (and I include most of both parties in the latter category, I once tried to work with the DP).

We are at a tough, painful and potentially disemboweling point in the history of These once United States. Part of our responsibility – every one of us sentient, hopeful, engaged citizens – is to find a way. No, there’s no white knight, but there have to be some folks with some degree of honesty, integrity, intelligence and understanding of what happened before our time.

I hold no candle for any of the current fartknockers but we had better damn well come up with Someone. And soon. Before we become a slave culture in toto.

I have posted here it was his opinion piece in the NYT that pulled me back in 92. I have hunted relentlessly for that piece of his, I’d like to reread it.

I am waiting fro him to find a way to exhort for Hillary.

Why on earth do people think Hillary, about not a great deal is known that is good, at all… think back, the picture is not pretty. Her alliances are not favorable to much other than repression and war…

why on earth assume she is better than Guiliani?

You know that NY cracker dipshit Arthur Gilroy beats a drum she is some lefty under cover, pretending to be a rightie to get elected.

You can find who you like, wozzle. So can Marie. So can everyone and their little dogs, too. I can’t stop you (pl.) and I wouldn’t even if I could.

But if s/he runs as a Democrat, I’m not on board. I don’t care how great they look and sound. I don’t care if Rudy is building a damn crematorium in my back yard and there SS officers knocking on my door holding eminent domain papers in one hand and guns in the other. I don’t care if Rudy’s alleged foe flies me to safety in Wonder Woman’s robot plane AND brings the car, the chicken, the pot for the chicken AND the damn garage out of a magician’s hat and hands them all to me once we land safely in Disneyworld’s luxury hotel lobby.

Who is to say NO to a slave nation, here. 90% living in forms of poverty and hard menial labor. Nearly all “entitlements” gone. The naton bled for foreign war and the endless arms race… a small strata of corporatists and better wage work for large corps who have regionally dividedthe nation… then a tiny sliver at the very top. Phoning it in from Dubai.

Who is to say it is not workable?

It is brutal, killing and the end for many. But not for the oligarchy.

ms_xeno – oh, right because I didn’t vote for Nader I’m an “obstructionist.” I’d be happy to vote for a credible and viable third party candidate. (My first registration was in the Peace and Freedom Party. That didn’t work out so well.) But I’m also mindful of the fact that even if Nader had squeaked through and won, his accomplishments in office would have been close to zero. Would have made the outsider Carter look like a miracle worker.

To have any chance of being effective before there is considerable institutional support in Congress, a third party candidate would have to win in a landslide. Where is such a person? Hell, I’d even settle for a third party candidate who could barely win as an investment in the future for such a party. Where is such a person? In the meantime, our choices are limited to really evil, evil, less evil and zero. That’s why I opted out in 2004.

Snide? Moi? It’s an historical fact that Nader didn’t come close to matching Perot’s success. Had I been a SF resident, I would have voted for Gonzales, but maybe that wouldn’t have been such a good idea since he didn’t bother to stay in the game after almost winning. The new mayor of Richmond might change the political dynamics in N. CA or might be a one off, talented politician.

…reading some of the columns Greg Bates wrote about Nader. That’s what I was getting at. The candidate has to make the sale. Big name columnists can do no more than help seal the deal. The sale is made on TV and will increasingly be made on You-Tube but that is still video. Do I wish it were different? Sure. Is it going to change in my lifetime? Nope. Perot demonstrated that even a weird looking, rightwing fruitcake can gain a following if they do it on the TV. Why is that so difficult to understand? Even the truly bizarre Ron Paul can gain a following by being right on a couple of things and by getting on the TV. It’s really not rocket science. I don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s done within the DEM Party or as an IND or third party. But it ain’t going to happen by whining about people who preferred the iffiness of Gore instead of giving GWB an easier victory.

HC, the first step to changing the system, so far as I’m concerned, is to stop, even for one brief election, from feeding it. Maybe that means voting Elaine Brown, Nader, Jello Biafra. Whomever. Maybe it means not voting at all.

Maybe if people try that, they’ll get in the habit. I have been told since the day I was old enough to vote that if I didn’t go Dem the fascists would be knocking at my door. At some point I made the connection between meekly voting for these clowns and their personal stake in maintaining and growing fascism to protect their own power. If Nader had never opened his big mouth, I might have been able to avoid that truth for a few more years. All he did was rush the realization in a little bit faster.

At best I would guess that the Dems might have had a different schedule for PlanIraq. More Peter Galbraithian than Ledeen and Gaffney. No diff.

Once again, I do think there’s a difference. Of course I’d rather have Samantha Power and Brezinski than Gaffney and Martin Kramer. Of course I’d rather have Paul Krugman managing the economy than Cheney’s energy pals.

But all that means is I’m past what the democrats think is their converation stopper.

Are you saying there’s no difference between Bush and Gore?

Nope. I’d rather have Gore.

But I’m saying it’s not enough of a difference to sink all your political energy into a corrupt system.

167: If the US were to transform into a police state (and remember, we’re just one or two major “terrorist” attacks away from such a thing happening), do you not think the secret police would work with WordPress and all the other blogging ASP services, as well as with the big blogs like Daily Kos, to go through their archives and match IP addresses (and thereby names) to “terrorism-supporting” comments and diaries?

But look on the bright side! We’ll be able to hold an Opera Glasses and Popcorn reunion in whichever concentration camp we all end up in! Look forward to meeting you all in person!

HC #166 – who the hell knows who Obama is? Smart, talented guy, but wow is he ever green. He doesn’t even know who he is. I truly doubt that he’s mature enough not to easily be pushed to the right by all the people he would have to surround himself with. The best I can say for him is that he wouldn’t be worse than Hillary but there’s a chance that he could be better. Beats the hell out of me how Democrats can delude themselves about Hillary. Have none of them looked at Bill’s record — that’s who they are: neo-liberal corporatists who think they’ve found the magic keys to the economic kingdom when in fact, Bill just got lucky that some of the high-tech industry finally kicked into the economy and a bunch of bozos went out and bought SUVs that renewed Detroit. Maybe Hillary should run on “A Hummer in every driveway.”

Not sure I’m capable of fathoming that Rudy can be worse than Bush/Cheney. Then again, I don’t think the GOP is going to win this time around and neither do they. As a party, they are disengaged and disorganized. The fundies will come on board but that still doesn’t get them anymore than 30-33%.

On the money chase, Hillary isn’t ahead. And her financial support base is still much weaker than Obama’s. Too soon to read the ground conditions in IA – as we saw last time, this can shift very late in the game. Hillary has been counting on Vilsack to pull it out for her, but he might not have as much clout this time around. Otherwise, she’s got some problem in IA. Remains to be seen if Edwards can build on his ’04 support there. On the GOP side, Mitt’s going to buy IA, but it’s going to cost a lot (the GOP caucus is more like a straw poll – the DEM caucus is truly Byzantine).

If the US were to transform into a police state (and remember, we’re just one or two major “terrorist” attacks away from such a thing happening), do you not think the secret police would work with WordPress and all the other blogging ASP services, as well as with the big blogs like Daily Kos, to go through their archives and match IP addresses (and thereby names) to “terrorism-supporting” comments and diaries?

I’ve been pretty heavily involved with NY Indymedia and it takes up half the non redacted entries in the NYPD spying papers. So yeah, I think they would.

Would they care enough to come after me? Would it be worth the fare for the Lincoln Tunnel to come out and give me the plunger up the ass treatment? Maybe.

Interestingly enough, remember the fuss about Walt and Mersheimer being kept off Amazon. If they were really doing surveillance this extensively, wouldn’t they want to keep a list of people buying this book? Why would they want people buying it in cash?

Stupid, I’m thinking that doom will come from my ruined kidneys and the exhorbitant medical bills that will be attached to them in ten years’ time. But I’ve been wrong before.

At any rate, it’s very freeing to have realized that neither party really has a stake in my happiness and survival. I don’t have to waste any more valuable time anxiously looking over my shoulder, carrying on and on a la’ Digby about why don’t they get it ? They don’t get it because they’re predators and I’m their prey. Very simple.

There’s always a difference – the question is it enough of a difference to matter? I screwed up in ’92 – like many, put getting a handle on the national debt as the most important issue. Actually it was – because we were getting short on time to reverse course to insure the financial wherewithal of Social Security. Where I screwed up was in not recognizing that delaying that for another four years wouldn’t be disastrous and not knowing anything about the DLC takeover of the DEM Party. Should have voted for GHB.

I’m going to blame a Hillary-Rudy GE on the morons in NYC. What were you thinking when you voted in the carpetbagger and *** (expletive deleted because I can’t think of one that’s appropriate to this scumbag).

re: Carter and Scrowcroft — why every President since Nixon (and will throw JFK into the pot) runs on domestic policy and drops it like a hot potato and focuses on FP when they get in office is because FP seems easier. The time delay from action to results is longer, after they’re out of office, and much less obvious that they’ve screwed up. LBJ got tagged for Truman, Ike and JFK decisions along with his own. Carter got tagged for Ike/Dulles decision in Iran. Clinton and GWB got lucky because they didn’t get tagged with Carter/Reagan decisions in Afghanistan even though the outcomes appeared on their watch. And they all just bumble along adding to the big pot of terrible, naive, stupid decisions of their predecessors. All still stuck in a Cold War mentality that was only slightly less delusional than their renaming of it as the WOT. One day, we the people will have to pay for all these mistakes.

Krugman’s a very smart guy but he’s the prototypical annoying liberal.

Listen to him on DN on immigration.

He’s like “well it’s bad and we have to do something about it and since I’m a liberal I feel bad about picking on Mexicans but I really don’t know what we need to do honestly”.

Why does some poor Mexican day laborer who’s got Minutemen and cops harassing him while he’s trying to make his 50 bucks to send back to his family care if Mr. tenure at Princeton gets 50,000 bucks from Enron wrings his hands or not?

Yes and no. Without electoral reform the candidate cannot get to the public without being a fucking billionaire, something you inadvertantly let slip when you proclaimed Perot a bigger success than Nader.

And saying that the professional Left and the mass media BOTH had no hand in Nader’s failure to get 5% for the Greens is like saying that advertising does not persuade people to buy a certain brand of chips. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t get paid to do it. For shit’s sake.

If you “sit back and wait,” if the professional Left “sits back and waits,” than the failure is yours (pl), too. The flaws of the one inept (in your eyes) candidate who tried to provide an alternative voice are in part your flaws, too. Because in your zeal to undermine and immobilize him you undermined and immobilized all comers.

Do you people really think that Gore enjoyed standing there and shutting down Congresswomen like Maxine Waters? That’s crazy.

Oh my … when he tried to shut them down by citing the rules, one of them (I think it was Lee or Waters, I don’t remember) said that she didn’t care if they were taking too long, he mockingly said something like, “Well the RULES care.”

Fuck him … his voice was dripping with contempt for them. After all, he rolled over and offered his backside to preserve, as I’ve heard him say several times, “the rule of law”, who were these uppity people to not follow his example?

ms_xeno – I think we all agree that electoral reform is needed. Hell, would guess that a solid majority in the country agrees with that. The question is how do we get it done? As long as those with the power to change it benefit from the current system, they won’t change it. Frankly, IMHO, until their is a broad-based groundswell of something like 25 million people willing and able to kick in at least $100 each to buy half of Congress and the WH, it cannot be changed.

Will google to see if I can pull up the information on how much Perot actually contributed to his campaigns. I have a fuzzy memory that he didn’t put much of his own money into the pot. Right now everybody thinks that Romney has put $17+million into his campaign, but those are only loans that he hopes will be repaid by a bunch of little people after he wins IA. Sort of like Kerry did last time around. There are a few who have self-funded like Jon Corzine, Herb Kohl and Mark Dayton – they may not have been inherently better elected officials but that self funding allowed them to be more independent and overall somewhat better. Cantwell kicked in a bunch in her first run but didn’t need to do so in her re-election. iirc Corzine and Kohl voted against the IWR but Dayton and Cantwell voted for it; so, not so much better I guess.

How can Serbia become the center for modern Nazi fans whose idol Hitler bent every effort to exterminate Jews, gypsies and of course Serbs? Hitler even managed to be quite efficient in this area.

Hannah Arendt writes how Eichmann, during his trial in Jerusalem, was pathetically trying to be entirely truthful about his facts and orders…never lying about killing somebody or sparing them. Except for one bureaucratic detail — those eight thousand Serbs whom Eichmann personally ordered killed within Serbia. Serbs were so invisible and expendable that Eichmann took a unique initiative in their case.

Today’s neonazis are mostly young skinheads with a newly composed homicidal ideology : kill the gays first, then the Jews, with the gypsies as an ever-popular main dish. But how do Serbs re-imagine themselves as fascist killers rather than fascist prey?

How can Serbia become the center for modern Nazi fans whose idol Hitler bent every effort to exterminate Jews, gypsies and of course Serbs?

Easy. Every country in Europe was fascist in the 1930s. Eastern Europe was ground zero of fascism. Nazism is just the most stylish, prestigious kind of fascism, best uniforms, army, etc., kind of the Mercedes (which was invented by Nazis) of fascism.

Even the noncombatant states were fascist before the Marshall Plan showed dictators that there was more profit in talking nice. Countries tried to copy the big, bad fascists with little comedy monsters of their own, like Trujillo in the Dominican Republic or Peron in Argentina. And in their humble way, all these guys did their best to do their worst. Trujillo actually tried to prove that the Dominicans were the lost tribe of Aryanism, and ordered something like 30,000 Haitian immigrants hacked to death with machetes for being “black.” Even the Mexicans tried to do the Fascist two-step, only being Mexican they went for the gaudiest color they could find, so while Germany had the brownshirts and Mussolini had the blackshirts, Mexico came up with…the Gold Shirts! “And put some frilly cuffs on that while you’re at it!”

Is this the America you thought you were living in? Is this the America your parents and teachers told you about? Is this the America that you sing about at all the ball games and public events, “the land of the free and the home of the brave”? Is this the America you have carried in your mind, and perhaps your heart, all these years?

You’d better snap out of it. You’d better slap yourself in the face and look around, see where you really are. You aren’t living in “the land of the free;” you’re living in a two-bit, tin-pot, half-assed tyranny, led by greasy cut-throats and howling cranks. And they have peopled the entire government with ideological automatons, willing and eager to use the levers of power to punish all those who displease the Leader.

What made the Holocaust totally unlike most genocides is that we remember the victims; and the only reason we do is, once again, the USA. The European Jews were totally vulnerable and despised over there, but their kin in America were doing fine and cared enough to remember their relatives who died. Compare this to almost any other example of genocide, and there are literally thousands of examples, and you’ll see the difference: most of the time (I mean DUH!) the tribe that gets genocided is the most despised, weak and helpless tribe in the region. That means nobody remembers them at all, or if they do they consider the genocide an example of Progress, or just one of those things. If you doubt that, then tell me quick what tribe lived 400 years ago in the city where you’re reading this now. I still, after years of trying to find out, don’t know what tribe lived around Fresno. Nobody even mentions them on the web–that’s how most genocides work. The tribe vanishes forever. That’s why they call it genocide, for God’s sake! And once it’s gone–Duh!–nobody remembers it or cares.

The reason people love to talk about Nazis killing Jews is that, thanks to the Jews in America, there were people who insisted on remembering the victims. If people thought about the genocide of, say, the tribe that lived where you lived, they’d get bummed. They’d realize the world is a slaughterhouse and there are no moral lessons. That’s why they’d rather talk about Auschwitz than…Fresno.

Btw, the tribe where I live now were the Potawatomi and the Menominee mainly, with a few others. We know this because there are rivers or casinos and roads named after them.

Watson, 79, says he is “mortified” by the imbroglio, and apologizes “unreservedly” for the offending comments, in which he suggested black people are not as smart as whites: he told the Sunday Times’ Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa,” since “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas testing says not really.” Watson also told Hunt-Grubbe, who lived and worked with him as a lab assistant in Long Island a decade ago, that even though he would hope all people are equal in intellectual capacity, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

I honestly don’t get it, seriously. I hate people for all sorts of reasons and I can’t say I’m free from bigotry but what would motivate a bloody Nobel Prize winner to babble on like a senile moron.

Corzine probably discovered that DC and the Senate were impossible; so, moved on to Gov of NJ.

MitM – sorry that I get exasperated by the left – blame it on age and forty years of watching the haplessness of the left that is smaller today than it was back then or even in the ’30s. A microcosm in action can be seen at the Pacifica radio stations. Endless infighting and power grabs in a puddle that never enlarges into a pond. Great brand but they also manage to piss off one or more demographics and programmer hosts who move on when they can’t take it any more. Almost all of the best stuff that has ever been produced and heard on radio came out of Pacifica stations but sixty years on it remains tiny while NPR moved into that niche and grew, providing inferior radio, at much higher cost and like PBS has devolved into just another commercial station.

MitM – #200 – sometimes life hands some people difficult choices with no good options. Like the doctors and nurses trapped in hospitals in NO after Katrina. Do you think they wanted to let some people die? Do you think that if they hadn’t stoically and robotically done what they could for those with the best chance to survive while ignoring the others that they could have survived themselves. And later along come those who want to second guess their actions and put them on trial for manslaughter.

So, you could watch F-9/11 and know exactly what was in Gore’s head. That he didn’t have to make a whole series of very difficult decisions from election day to the day he presided for the last time as President of the Senate. That he was contemptuous of Maxine Waters and the others who stood up to register their objections. You, know what, that’s not what I saw. I saw a man in deep pain. Doing the job assigned to him with no option to do anything else. Maxine was well aware of what would happen that day and that it was important to get it on the record that Americans had been disenfranchised in the election. The record in case anybody ever managed to piece together the full story. Not that that was likely to happen because American DOESN’T “care about black people.” America doesn’t care about anybody but white, wealthy people, preferably male.

So, go ahead, blame Gore for everything — everybody else does. I prefer to used up my quota of loathing on the Clintons, Bushes and all their suck ass enablers and buddies. Maybe I’m giving Gore a pass he doesn’t deserve but as he’s never held the reins of power, I’m can’t be sure that such loathing for him is warranted. A few weeks ago there was a diary on dKos about the death of Richard Jewell. I was stunned by a poster who admitted that he’d taken one look at him on TV and was convinced that he had set off that bomb That wasn’t my impression of Jewell at the time. But neither his nor my first impressions were worth anything — because that’s not a good method on which to determine guilt or innocence. It’s why I detest all these court TV shows. How many innocent people has that Nancy Grace convicted?

well, that marginaliziation is often by design, or did the revelations of agent provocateurs slide right by you? The co-option of “activist” groups like NARAL was pursued by party organs and corporate money. The left stupidly resorted to the courts and lobbying instead of doing hard politics, I’ll give you that, but it’s hard to build a movement when your leaders are killed or bought off.

After Gore blew off the CBC, are you suprised that so many were bought off fairly quickly? Why stand with people who stand in the rain when it’s made painfully clear that they … don’t … matter?

The “powers that be” (and yes, I understand how you’ll take that … I don’t care) killed many emergent leaders, and bought off many more. It’s gonna take years, if not generations, for leaders to emerge, and folding to the Donklephants only puts that day further into the future. Look how long Latin America has taken after Che was taken out.

Whatever, cling to your comfortable notions of being rational and reasonable and realistic. It was the Donks who approved rightist judges, the Donks who expanded domestic electronic eavesdropping, the Donks who passed “free” trade for the corporations, the Donks who started Vietnam, the Donks who funded the foundations of what became al Queda, the Donks who …

… shit, why bother?

Cling to your sinking flotation device, and make sure you stock up on contraceptives before Hillary takes office.

The Dems were going to let Bush in. People would be all pissed off because they knew Gore won. Bush would fuck things up, look like an idiot, propose some really stupid shit and maybe even get in trouble about a spy plane or something in China.

Then the Dems would come roaring back in 2002, take Congress, and get the White House back in 2004.

Too bad they couldn’t predict 19 crazy Arabs would ram a couple of planes into the WTC and some insane hicks in Ohio would get so upset about gay marriage they’d vote their own social security down the river.

I listened to his tone of voice and watched his body language. I’m no more guilty of reading his mind than you are by imparting noble motives in actions that betray no evidence of anything like nobility. He’s a child of privilege buckling under pressure … a man who plainly feels no obligation to the people who supported him, a man who takes those people for granted.

Look, I love his barn-burning speeches since. I love his propagandization of the vital issue of our despoiling of our environment. I’m under no illusions that he’s presenting straight science … he’s selling a shift of perspective. Great, someone has to, but he’s a political hack with a long history of pandering to cultural reactionaries and militarists, and a deep patrician’s distrust of the hoi polloi.

Marie, I know how I tried to get it done. I tried to get the Green Party 5% of the vote in 2000. I vote Green or Indy wherever I can. I have volunteered for a candidate or two. Nothing big, but I had the free time so I did it. I try to keep up on issues like IRV and their progress or lack of it around the U.S.

I have no idea what you did or what you’re planning to do. I try hard not to think about it most of the time because I don’t like seeing you as my enemy any more than I enjoy seeing my partner and most of my relatives and friends as enemies. But politically, we are just that.

The DP conspires with the GOP to keep us in the eternal loop where nobody else is allowed at the table of power. Every election is Our Last Ditch Attempt To Stave Off Fascism. Until the next one.

I’m sick and tired of that shit.

BTW, I was not referring to Perot literally buying the airwaves, though for all I know he does own an interest in them. I was talking about how millions of alleged thinkers in this country — from CNN to La Nation to Kos to the guy on the bus next to me– are enamored of the extremely wealthy and of killers. In Perot’s case it was the best of both worlds: He made his fortune largely off bloated defense contracts. The irony is that Nader is also a wealthy man but I’m guessing that in terms of hard currency he was not and never will be a patch on Perot. But perhaps I’m mistaken.

In any case, I think that’s the main difference between the two campaigners and how much traction they were able to get with political tastemakers and with the general public. I realize that we will never agree on this, but it’s my considered opinion.

I’m sick and tired of thieves and killers. I’d rather spend Election Day at the fucking mall buying shoes than vote for any of them. Red or Blue.

HC #216 – is it just my impression or are NJ politicians in competition with TX for the prize as to which is the most corrupt, useless and venal? Of course there are many other competitors. Hah, no wonder DC is a cesspool; look at where all those vermin escaped from. Quite amazing that this country has worked as well as it has for as long as it has given our complete inability to hire decent public officials.

Not sure I’m capable of fathoming that Rudy can be worse than Bush/Cheney.

Yes, he could be. Trust what Hair Club said above. Given the power of the presidency I fully expect that he could us look back fondly at George Bush. I always forget that people outside of NY were not familiar with Giuliani before 9/11. He is a despot , arrogant and mean-spirited and stubborn beyond belief. Like building a bunker in Bldg 7 no matter how many people advised against it.

Those pictures of him walking through the streets of NYC after the attacks, the truth was his bunker had been destroyed and he had to scramble out of there. He did not look heroic to me or probably to most NYers. I fully expected the media to mention the controversial bunker and to suggest that he looked dazed, which is what he looked like to me, and had it not been such a tragic day, I would have laughed at seeing all the predictions, which ignored, come true.

Speaking of people standing up, why couldn’t Gore simply have opted out that day? As for worrying about labels, such as ‘sore loserman’? I don’t get that at all. Why should anyone care what they say? The public is longing for someone to stand up and as soon as someone does, I doubt any name-calling from the right, or left for that matter will sway the public.

I make fun of Glenn Greenwald, for instance, for being tedious and tightly wound. Well wouldn’t you be? Friends, you must shred the assumption that the Republic is “not dead, only dreaming.” The heart has stopped. The coin is on the tongue. Charon’s poled the barge. Etc. A new reality is better than a new movie, as Amiri Baraka wrote. Listen. America isn’t a constitutional republic. Repeat it. You’ll feel better. Or, you’ll feel worse at first, but then you’ll feel better. You have to open yourself up to the notion that there are other kinds of freedom than living under a certain kind of benevolent government, which is what you’ve been taught since kindergarten. Liberty isn’t a symptom of your State. It’s surprising what happens to your mind when you start calling things by their real names.

Overall, the record of accountability for atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers is pathetic. Soldiers who kill prisoners in custody routinely get administrative punishment; missing a troop movement gets a court-martial, but murdering a helpless man rarely does. In the particularly brutal killing of two young men in Bagram prison, in which soldiers testified that they used to assault one of them, Dilawar, a 22-year-old taxi driver, just because they liked to hear him scream “Allah!” in pain, nobody was charged with murder, on the incredibly specious reasoning that, since 27 different people used to enjoy torturing him, there was no way to determine which “unlawful knee strike” caused him to die. Try using that defense if you’re a young black kid holding up a 7-11 when one of your accomplices shoots the clerk. Contractors may be subject to no law, but the law soldiers are subject to is rarely much better than nothing.

MitM – Cling to your sinking flotation device, and make sure you stock up on contraceptives before Hillary takes office.

This is the same kind of crap I get from the Hill-bots; although they tell me to take my GOP talking points ass over to FR. Whereas, I think Hill and her minions should join the GOP.

Like it or not there will be a president sworn in on 1/20/09. I struggle with the obligation of being a citizen of this country and the future of it. Far easier to say, “Fuck it” – I’ll be dead before all the really bad stuff happens. Maybe I should have said “Fuck it” thirty years ago and concentrated on making a lot of money, voted GOP so that I could keep most of it, and looked forward to retirement in a cool chateau somewhere. IOW behaved like most Americans. Sadly, I wasn’t made that way. Sadly I now fight with someone I mostly agree with, but who chooses to attack me because I’ve dare to point out that the left mostly sucks like the Donks. That all Donks aren’t created equal. That each of us on different occasions will be completely wrong and make terrible decisions. Usually because we failed to gather the best or most complete data sets — or failed to recognize that our data sets are woefully inadequate. I have no tolerance for those who voted for the IWR because it was too easy to get the relevant information and make the right decision. Yet, that is not always the case. If X knew then what we know now, then X would have taken a different course. But, if there was no way that X could have known then, it’s asinine to blame them. (Which is the error many DEMS make when they attack the Nader 2000 voters.)

Maybe I should go hang out at FR — probably the only place where I won’t be mistaken for a conservative. Nah, they’ll think I’m a lesbo Hill-shill.

Soon after their historic January 1st 1994 uprising, the EZLN recouped the “fincas”(ranches) where they had once toiled as sharecroppers and slaves and declared them in collective possession but did not register them with the “mal gobierno.” Now the Agrarian Reform Secretariat is awarding those lands to rival farmers in the form of “ejidos” or rural communal production units.
Skirmishes between the oddly named OPDDIC (“Organization for the Protection and Defense of Indian Farmers”) and Zapatista autonomous communities have been frequent since the spring.

Meanwhile in the highlands, the key Zapatista autonomous municipality of San Andres Sakamch’en de los Pobres is under threat from a previously unknown paramilitary formation, “Red OPDDIC”, and PRD thugs have attacked Zapatista farmers in neighboring Zinacantan.

The anti-Zapatista surge has forced the Comandantes of the EZLN under Marcos’s pen to suspend the second stage of the Other Campaign, the Zapatista-inspired grassroots mobilization to build a new Mexican Left from the bottom up. In 2006, the “Otra” focused its energies in the center and north of the country and Year II is rooted in the south, particularly the conflictive state of Oaxaca. But travel has grown risky for the EZLN leadership. When a delegation sought to attend an all-Indian anti-capitalist encounter in Yaqui territory in Chihuahua this October, the comandantes were repeatedly harassed at military and police checkpoints and returned to Chiapas because of threats to their personal safety.

Perhaps because of the threats against the Zapatista Army of National Liberation’s hard won autonomy, Subcomandante Marcos startled longtime Zapaphiles in September when he suddenly extended an olive branch to his once bitter rivals in the Popular Revolutionary Army, backing up the EPR’s demands for the return of their historic leaders and the guerrilleros’ harassment campaign which has been largely directed at PEMEX infrastructure. The gesture seems to establish a tacit understanding for the first time and maybe even an eventual alliance between the most prominent Mexican heirs to Che Guevara’s “guerra de guerrilla.

SB #225 – but that sounds just like Bush/Cheney to me. Stupid, mean, pig-headed and ethically and morally challenged. Another variation of Nixon.

As for opting out, nobody with any self pride would call in sick on the most, of one of the most, difficult days in one’s career. That’s for wimps and chickenshits like GWB. There was nothing more or worse that they rightwing could have done to him if he had but they would have made enough noise about it that all of us would have heard. I would have had zero respect for him if he’d opted out.

ms_xeno understand. But we’ve seen candidates shooting for that magic 5% five times since 1968. Wallace and Perot succeeded but it still didn’t take them and their movements anywhere. (Can’t recall if Anderson made it. Eugene McCarthy in ’76 didn’t.) (Tried to check on Perot’s 1992 financing but on-line records don’t go back that far. Found two reports saying that he’d dumped $63 million in the race but not inclined to take the word of either of those. It’s like today when all the papers are reporting tht Mitt have contributed $17+ million to his campaign – not accurate. But there is no question that someone with big buck has an advantage because loaning one’s campaign money at critical points can make the difference. Forbes spent $38 and I doubt that he recouped that from contributors. Looking through that old stuff reminded me why Perot was unacceptable – a balance budget amendment is like what the IMF and World Bank have imposed on third world countries, terrible policy.) It’s simultaneously a tough and easy nut to crack. Absent a charismatic leader and a simple straightforward and easy to articulate and understand policy position, it’s too tough. FDR was rather brilliant on both scores. He also had to rank order his priorities which is very difficult for most of us.

For example, the war on drugs is a disaster. In a rational world this one would be near the top; in our screwed up world, has to be put on the back burner. (Newsom would like to have clinics for drug addicts to use when they shoot up. Rational because it reduces the OD rate. But it does nothing about all the crime associated with being an IV drug user. A step in the right direction? Probably. A good first step? I don’t know.)

Maybe at this stage too many Americans are so turned off to politics that nothing productive can be accomplished. That this system and our economy has to crash and burn before it can be rebuilt. Maybe societies can’t move forward until they’ve had to live under a fascist dictatorship for a while. Look at Spain today — they’re at least a decade ahead of us on social issues.

Re #229 – apologize for not putting quotation marks around “lesbo” – was paraphrasing what freepers would call me and that might not have been clear.

…I reserve the right to vote for people who will do their best to make sure third parties are not viable because — get this — third parties are not viable, and are impossible anyway because of structural impediments. So there. However, I also reserve the right to complain about the party I do vote for. What’s more, why hasn’t anyone offered me an alternative to this?! Huh? Those haters . . .

…The 300 has the usual brief action pic sex scene meant to reassure the fanboys in the audience that the reason they’re masturbating during the battle sequences is really because of the hot chick in the first reel… —Alan Smithee

ms_xeno 232 Maybe I should have been fighting for a 3rd Party– a real one– twenty years ago. Oh, wait. There’s no “maybe” about it.

Wouldn’t have worked. There was less to build on than there was in the ’60s and ’70s. In part because there were successes in those years. Not all great as they first appeared to be, but successes none the less. The only leader that I’m convinced our government destroyed and that left a gaping hole was that of MLK, Jr. Had he lived the civil rights and anti-war movements could have merged and then incorporated the emerging equal rights and environmental movements. Instead they fractured. Did get the EPA, did elect Blacks and women to Congress. Even passed the ERA – but it all seemed to stop as the Vietnam War and draft ended, Nixon resigned, and ERA wasn’t ratified.

That first wave of Black and women in Congress now looks like an embarrassment of riches. Julian Bond, Conyers, Dellums – they were great back then. Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm, Cissy Farenholt, Bella Abzug, etc. The second and third waves are pale imitations of the originals.

If there hadn’t been so many battlefronts all at once, we might have done better. There was the fertile soil of generalized optimism about the future of the country and an orientation towards doing better. Then greed and competing amongst ourselves took over — the country was still wealthy but at there was a psychological shift; a sense of scarcity that hadn’t existed since the ’30s. But not being real, people didn’t work together. Today we’re actually poorer but don’t know it because we’re awash in consumer goods, imported cheap crap, quantity instead of quality. Instead of investing in sustainable infrastructure and agriculture and education we have IPods, etc. Socialism can’t take root when people think they’re wealthy.

You don’t get me, Marie. The problem is NUMBERS. Too many people like you insist on throwing good money after a bad party. NUMBERS, Marie. Say it with me. Or not. But Scruggs is correct: People like you are trapped in circular-logic-land, and people like me are stuck circling the bowl with you no matter how many hours we waste lamenting the stench. Because we’re just a flyspeck on your ass, proportion-wise.

No wonder I’ve finally thrown up my hands and am trying to figure out a way to blow this star-spangled popsicle stand. Sure, the odds aren’t good that some country with an actual parliamentary/multi-party system wants a gloomy, middle-aged paper pusher with bad feet, but I doubt they’re any worse than the odds that people like you will ever wake the hell up.

Fashion will save us. Dress as ordinary freedom loving liberal citizens.
Make our case. That should work – uh – unless the deal is there is a well financed ,coopted, and coordinated effort to exploit ordinary freedom loving liberal citizens trying to make their case.

ms_xeno – what makes you think that I haven’t been awake since 1968? Go for it — make a difference – do it right and we’ll back you up with vote and maybe money. So far, we haven’t seen anything from your generation but yuppies, internet millionaire nerds, Reagan/Rambo fans, “libertarian” BBBs. Back then we knew libertarian type GOPs like Goldwater were crazy; now Ron Paul is cool. That nutcase Perot was cool in ’92. btw – I’m very selective in what DEMs get any money from me. So, stop laying this crap on me about supporting those sorry-assed DEMs in office.

MitM — just been around and realistic. But deep down I still must be an optimist because I have not yet said, “f*** it” to the whole system.

On a lighter note for anyone with HBO – apparently Gary Kasparov blew Maher and his guest Tweety out of the water. A comment and amusing response:

I agree he was good…

as was his appearance on 60 minutes a few weeks ago. It’s too bad Russia is now a police state once again.

You hate “the left” for failing you? Frankly I truly think you missed the meaning of the killings in the 60s (it was far more than MLK that was orchestrated to redefine, decimate and kill off movement politics, charismatic leaders and a whole generation or two of hope) and slide thru the 70s to Reagan. Which more and more I have no question that Kennedy, in orchestrating votes for Anderson against a sitting president of his own party, very much helped into office.

Just as it was revealed this year, by Novak, that Eagleton was the source for the slime and slam he laid on McGovern. Even before Eagleton was mistakenly picked for VP.

What sort of party do you think you are supporting? And make no mistake, in your tortured hand wrings over who this who that, deep defences of Gore (who fucking cares by now, he truly is HISTORY) you support the party.

I think you deep down resent that people here, and similar to people here, have over the past years finally fully abandoned the party.

Why do you even care? Yo hve such dimissal for anyone who disagrees iwth you.

You remind me of the bullshite that Meteor Blades dished out here for months. Til he saw it made not difference. he too, is history.

Well, every one’s political decisions are their own. And fully equal to your political decisions.

Weeks ago you wrote off and dimissed my own personal decision to “with hold my vete” as worthless and meaningless.

Get a grip Marie.

Wothholding the vote is a political decision. You just dislike and for some reason resent it.

Kasparov was great, and called Maher on a lot of shit. It was fantastic.

Anyway, I agree w/ Ms_X … you’re grasping, and lumping us in with caricatures that have nothing to do with anything we’ve written, here or in the past.

I’m not saying fuck it to the overall system, just the present one. After all, my favorite founding father made it quite clear that periodic revolutions were necessary for a truly free Republic.

Know this, though … I expect nothing of the wingers. They are either ignorant or evil. But appeasers, pathetic donk clingers on … they are the real problem, the real monkey wrenches in the way of the machinery of change. Hang on, cling to those remnants of a myth of your precious status quo … it will gain you nothing, and you will drag the rest of us down with you.

ms-xeno – let’s see you blamed me for the pathetic state of the Democratic Party today and I point out that your generation hasn’t done any heavy lifting and you tell me “fuck off.” Nice.

Oh, yes, there was the struggle to get birth control and abortion for women. Access to jobs that only men were allowed into. (And I had to pee in a cup before being hired — not to check for drugs but pregnancy.) Let me tell you that if many of us, the first women that we’re allowed in the door, hadn’t worked our butts off to demonstrate that women were perfectly capable — no not capable, we had to fuckin be better than the guys to demonstrate that we were capable, those doors would have been closed and locked before the next generation knocked. We were happy to do that for ourselves and those that followed us — but we didn’t appreciate being kicked in the teeth by younger women who went — ooh, yuck to feminists. (Not accusing you of that sentiment, only women in your age cohort.) In the meantime, we also had to battle with men in our age cohort — the ones that appreciated our participation in trying to end the war and draft but as soon as they discovered that they had competition for those jobs that they expected to be reserved for their white asses, they didn’t like us so much anymore.

I recognize that every generation has unique struggles, challenges and opportunities. And we all do better if we listen and learn from each other. We couldn’t wait until we were old enough to vote. By the ’80s when I was teaching, young adults couldn’t be bothered to vote; we’ve satisfied with an old man that I knew was bad news at the age of 14 when he began his political career. So, don’t blame me for the mess or tell me to fuck off — talk to your peers and those younger than you. 1980 wasn’t Morning in America but the beginning of the long dark night.

How have you all construed my more nuanced perception and analysis of Gore (and I have repeatedly said that he has two incompatible political persuasions in his psyche and there was no guarantee in 2000 that the populist Gore would surface and be dominant if he won — it was a coin toss which is why I never engaged in the bashing of Nader 2000 voters) to mean that I’m a “Kos Krew” loyal Democrat? Stated that I erred in ’92 in voting for Clinton – loathe the Clintons. Didn’t vote for Kerry – withheld my vote, not that I thought it was a political act – nothing more than a refusal to vote for someone who voted for the IWR. I think it would be great if they held an election and nobody showed up. Just as it would be great if nobody showed up for their bloody stupid wars. But I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that withholding my vote means anything to the powers that be — they probably would say, “Good.”

Marisa, when I start urging people to gather in front of Chevron facilities and singing Kumbaya for the democracy movement in Burma while this country is slaughtering and destroying another country then you can liken me to MB. The sixties were very complex – and I don’t happen to share your views that a generation of powerful leaders in this country were assassinated. Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and MLK, Jr. had much more to offer and I’d like to think that we’d be much better off had they lived. Perhaps should include Fred Hampton. The Kennedys were Cold War warriors and we have no more idea if either of them would have grown into something more and better than we do Gore. Gore Vidal would say , no about RFK; I don’t know.

Have to take a lot of what Novak says with a grain of salt. Wouldn’t surprise me that Eagleton was part of the inside/backroom crowd trying to take down McGovern. OTOH, it doesn’t make much sense that he would have been doing it before he was selected VP – more likely that he did it after being dumped. But it was McGovern’ and his team that was responsible for the selection, and they either blew it or behind the scenes negotiations went on to put Eagleton on the ticket. Maybe something like what I think took place in 2000. Maybe McGovern was set up – but not by Eagleton – because his psych history came out very quickly after the nomination and essentially ended McGovern’s campaign.

Ted Kennedy in 1980 was pathetic. I felt so sorry for Joan having to drag herself around and act as if all was well. The DC DEMs never liked Carter. They may have been content to run Congress and let the GOP have the WH for all I know. But as we’ve already noted in this tread, Carter was no prince either and brought a bunch of sleazebags from Georgia to DC with himself. Bert Lance? The precursor to BCCI.

All I look for is “good enough” elected officials. Would grudgingly vote for a “good enough” GOP if ever one appeared which I doubt I’ll ever see. At this stage IMHO both major parties are unsustainable. For all practical purposes the Pub-donks rule now. This country has been screwed up on FP since the end of WWII, no difference ever between the two parties since then. On domestic issues, DEMs were better until 1980 and had enough power to hold the GOP in check. Now we’re all just one big mixed up stew of offal.

and you need ot read the devolution of the Eagleton Novak conversations. It all came out over several days a few months ago.

AND Eagleton was whispering the big slam (a slur at McGovern that Eagleton told Novak was the sentiment of many in the party, that he was ”the candidate of abortion, etc”) to Novak before he was selected.

It was not party then, is not a party now. A broken set of factions that works in concert with the hard right to deny people in America. THEN and now. The party should have split decades ago. It did not. So we get weak things like the OoI group in the House. USELESS.

Go back to when Novak’s book came out. Read the releases, the interviews and his appearnce on MTP at the round table. I believed him.

It was discussed here in real time, I recall I ws far more upset at Eagleton than was JJB… and we are roughly (I think) contemporaries (as I believe are you and I) and I am no one’s fool Marie how ever you dismiss my political decisions..

…ms-xeno – let’s see you blamed me for the pathetic state of the Democratic Party…

I blame people of all ages for the pathetic state of the two-party system, Marie. From voting age on up. Which you would realize if you read my comments carefully.

And you know nothing about what “heavy lifting” I and others have tried to do, because you didn’t see it on the nightly news and it wasn’t ordained and blessed by the Big Chill so it doesn’t exist. I am not interested in playing Gen-Gap Twister with you. I think that’s 99% a crock of shit, and again, I have said that before both here and elsewhere.

So.

Former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been released on a $1 million bail after pleading not guilty to the murder of Sam DuBose. Tensing, who is white, fatally shot the 43-year-old African-American man on July 19 after stopping him for not having a front license plate. Two additional officers, Phillip Kidd and David Lindenschmidt, hav […]

As the Senate prepares to vote to defund Planned Parenthood, we look at the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-choice group behind the attacks on Planned Parenthood. The group was founded by David Daleiden who is seen in the undercover sting videos using a fictional name. We speak to RH Reality Check's Sharona Coutts, who wrote the piece, "Exclu […]

The Senate is planning to vote as soon as Monday to strip Planned Parenthood of $500 million in federal funding. The vote comes as Planned Parenthood is coming under fire from anti-choice activists after the release of a series of undercover sting videos were published online. The heavily edited videos suggest the organization profits from supplying aborted […]

In Portland, Oregon, law enforcement officers have removed Greenpeace activists who spent 40 hours suspended from the St. Johns Bridge in order to block an icebreaking ship commissioned by oil giant Shell from leaving for the Arctic. Hundreds of activists have been gathering on the bridge and in kayaks since Tuesday night in efforts to stop Shell's plan […]

On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Drake, a former Senior Executive at the National Security Agency, says he was targeted by the NSA because he exposed that the agency had intel that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and because he blew the whistle on a massive secret surveillance program aimed at Americans

James K. Gailbraith says, IMF is demanding a substantial reduction of the Greek debt to participate in any new deal and meanwhile German law makers are refusing to approve a new bail-out without the IMF

James K. Galbraith a member of the working group advising the former finance minister Varoufakis on 'Plan B' says there were great impositions imposed on the Greek government including certain procedures that removed control from the government and placed them in the hands of creditor institutions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said it will launch the first ever rule on Monday to cut carbon emissions from power plants, a plan that opponents in the coal industry and their political allies will fight in the courts.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, the man to beat in this week's first televised Republican presidential debate, said on Sunday he does not plan to attack his rivals and downplayed expectations for his performance, saying "I'm not a debater."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. backers of the Iran nuclear deal are increasingly confident of enough Democratic support to ensure it survives review by Congress, despite fierce opposition by majority Republicans and a massive lobbying drive.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.